


A Vacation on Shadow

by Mizzy



Category: Firefly
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: het_bigbang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-02
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-24 06:19:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizzy/pseuds/Mizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a heist goes wrong, the crew of Serenity need somewhere to hide out, but all their regular hidey holes got burnt out by the Operative, and none of their other acquaintances would take them in, considering what happened to all others who've sheltered them. But Mal has one safe place left... One he never wanted to have to use... On the core planet Shadow. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Vacation on Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> This wouldn't exist without my lovely beta Telaryn who saved this from the brink of complete and total disaster. I love you, brain twin; NEVER LEAVE ME.
> 
> I promised several people when starting this thing that I would explain what I meant about coming up with the main deviation of this AU while completely drunk. Well...
> 
> This fic came about after a drunken reading of the Serenity Visual Companion, where I found a little drawing of all the planets - and drunkard!me discovered Shadow was right next to Ariel in the diagram, so drunkard!me drunkenly convinced drunken self that Shadow was a core planet too! And not, y'know, an outer planet. Which makes much more sense. And is canon. But who wants canon, hm?
> 
> Anyway, in a bid to regain some sense of cogency within myself and draw together my sane and drunken states in unity, I contemplated a Zen garden, and then reread the Companion, and pounced on that throwaway line that Mal's home world Shadow was destroyed in the war. And then wondered what if Shadow was a core planet - or became one when the Alliance won the war - and that transformation, of his home world becoming a posh core planet, would be what Mal would consider as his home world being destroyed.
> 
> How that got to "Mal and Inara should dry hump against a wall" is beyond me, but I'm blaming the Malibu. Again.

~~~~

 _Home is where your history begins._  
 _ **Where the Heart Is**_ _ **-**_   _ **Billie Letts**_

~~~~

"MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!"

Experience told Mal Reynolds what the thick, tin-covered walls of the Alliance-funded bank tried to keep secret - the identity of the screamer.

"Someone needs to break it to Jayne that he yells like a girl," Zoe muttered.

"How 'bout I task you for the duty?" Mal asked, raising the gun in his hand higher and scanning the area for trouble. When Zoe paused in loading the boxes on the sled to glare at him, Mal shrugged - throwing his free hand up in disgust. "Just a thought."

The fact that he accidentally clocked an approaching security guard with that same hand, knocking the man on his ass, forced him to admit he was possibly angrier than the situation called for.

 _Still and all, one of these times I'd like to see a job go smooth._

Jayne appeared in the doorway, face flushed and grime smeared across his forehead. "It's the gorram feds," he snarled, flinging himself forward with a dangerous precision so he could help Zoe heft the sled of goods and begin dragging it to freedom. "Doc's settin' up a diversion. We gotta hoof it!"

"The doc?" Mal blurted, but Zoe was making that sound in the back of her throat that had privates almost dropping the contents of their privates back in the day. Since Mal sure liked having complete control of his under carriage, he shut up and took point.

The mule had gone south on a job a month earlier, taken out by a rival band of thieves who were annoyed that Serenity and her crew were stealing on their turf. Privately Mal cottoned Zoe might have helped speed the vehicle on its way to the hereafter - not all the bullets they found were the cheap-made kind. Out of deference to his first mate and her moods, he'd kept his peace and pocketed the S9 shells they found.

The mule had reminded him of Wash too.

A bullet sizzled past Mal's ear, dragging him back to confront today's certain brush with death. "Wasn't the doc supposed to be pulling some grand diversion and saving our tails about now?" Twisting around, he started firing back in the direction of the oncoming bullets. An unwelcome recollection of another attempt at diversion by the doc by getting himself naked made him shudder. While a repeat performance would have been amusing blackmail material, it wouldn't necessarily help them escape the wall of bullets spraying their general direction.

In the end he was almost relieved when a nearby building exploded in a blaze of green fire. Property damage made a lot more sense - it gave them a few precious seconds to gain on their mode of escape.

But only a few seconds. " _Single-balled iguanas,_ " Mal spat in Chinese, feeling his knee start to burn and praying that against all odds it wasn't a bullet that had started the fire. His knee had started to pain him regular over the last couple of months - not that he'd admitted as such to anyone - and a gunshot wound wasn't likely to do anything to help matters. "Looks like the doc ain't got as good a criminal mind as he - "

Before he could finish, another building blew up. Then another. And another after that - each of them shooting pretty colored flames into the sky like the giant fireworks Mal had seen growin' up on - He shook his head, forcing himself to stop reminiscing in the middle of a crisis like some half-wit. 

If the reaction of the shooters bearing down on them was any indication, one of the explosions had been a more important Alliance facility than the bank. The number of bullets heading in their direction dropped by half, telling Mal that most of their pursuers had been pulled back to deal with the fires.

Never one to look a gift horse in the choppers, Mal, Jayne and Zoe continued at their break-neck pace, heading straight for Serenity's open cargo bay - yanking the sled behind them. Kaylee, worry clouding her pretty face, slammed the button down as soon as they were over the threshold. Jayne and Mal continued firing as the doors slowly closed, splintering burns along the ramp.

Mal threw himself at the control panel as soon as the doors clanged shut. "Take us up!" he barked into the communicator. The second he said it the ship was lurching skyward. 

" _Aw, hell!_  What've you done to my Betsy?" Jayne howled suddenly. Mal whipped around, fingers tightening on the trigger of his gun automatically, and he sagged as soon as he saw Jayne cradling his new grenade launcher, a dour look on his face. Mal had to excuse him the dour - the end was splattered with green and purple paint.

Simon, scrambled off his perch on the end of a pile of crates, edging backwards. Protective as always where Simon was concerned, Kaylee inserted herself bodily between the two men.

"Only way Jayne," she protested. "Had to get that mixture to fire and hit the right buildings - the bad ones. Simon saved your skins. And it ain't the first time, I might point out."

"He's cleanin' it," Jayne grunted, heaving the weapon at Simon, who nearly fell on his backside when he caught it.

Serenity bucked and swerved under their feet, and Mal was finally able to put words to the worry gnawin' at the back of his brain. "Have none of you got a single mind between you?" He felt dizzy and his chest was tight, but it was rage pure and simple and clean. "Leavin' your sister on the bridge of my ship without help?"

 _Rage...it was rage...not the sickness...not this soon..._

The feeling blistering through his chest, sharpened by denial of what the doctor on Harvest had told him would be his fate, was suddenly blazing out at the others. "The girl's a genius - I'll give you that one for free." He clambered up the stairs, heading for the bridge. "But that genius ain't consistent. We can't trust that she's not going to collapse inwards and leave us drifting."

His boots clattered against the deck, and even though he'd left them behind he continued his ranting - using the rage as a shield against the darker fear that drove him these days. "You can't leave her..." He staggered onto the bridge, taking in the scene at a glance.

"...alone..." His voice trailed off. Inara stood behind River, one hand on the girl's shoulder. "Huh."

Inara turned to him. "We're being tailed," she said, her voice devoid of its usual blend of annoyance and amusement.

Her uncharacteristic seriousness was infectious. Mal was all business as he took Wash's-  _the pilot's_  - chair, holding onto the controls and hitting the button for the comm. Denial was easier hidden in the mess of routine. "Kaylee, need you on the bridge, now. We've got a tail. Seven strong. Jayne - what's our baby situation?"

"More than you think," River said. Mal always assumed he had nothing of anything, even if he'd inventoried it all his own self, so it wasn't a stretch for River to be right in this situation.

Jayne's voice crackled onto the comm. "Six."

"Won't all follow," River said, her large, luminous eyes darting between the screens in front of her and the front window. "But they've clocked our numbers."

Mal flicked a glance at her, and nodded hard. "Jayne, Zoe, drop the cry babies. Now."

There had been an accident a while back - another failed heist - and now the cry-babies had to be manually launched down in the cargo bay. Mal was relieved - deploying the units was another thing Wash did -  _used to do_  - well.

Their cover dropped, River and Mal burned the engine. 

Against all odds they'd slipped away again - they were free.

Mal felt it the moment they were - his entire body sagged into the cushions that had just _appeared_  on the chair a couple of days after the Miranda incident. He suspected River was to blame - it was bad enough that a reader knew how much the fight with the Operative had taken out of him - he couldn't afford anyone else knowing.

He held the stick lightly as River plugged in a set of co-ordinates that would take them on a course well away from where they were due to drop the goods. Kellum would be a mite ornery when his goods didn't appear on schedule, but he tended not to hold a grudge for too long; especially when the Feds were involved. A month of hiding should do it.

Mal knew he should go down to the sickbay, get the bullet fragments out of his knee, but his chest was feeling a little tight again, and he was feeling dizzy. He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated on breathing, even though it hurt a little. When he opened his eyes, River was watching him disapprovingly.

Mal glared back at her, his expression calculated to intimidate, and she just shrugged him off. Sometimes River's expressions were full of years beyond what she should reasonably be showing, but in her quieter moments she was plenty wise enough too, and in moments like this she showed it best.

Showed him up best.

Mal knew his symptoms, knew them better than anyone. He hadn't needed that damn doctor on Harvest to tell him. His days in the Black were numbered, but if he thought about it too much, chances were his panic would shorten that time drastically. 

It was best not to know. Denial was best for all, until his lungs finally gave up, and that day could be a million miles away, or it could be tomorrow, and all Mal knew was that even one more day on Serenity was one more than Wash ever could have-

Mal could fly and live in denial for as long as he could get away with, but he'd never escape from the truth. Kaylee had said it once. Sometimes a thing got broke and couldn't be fixed. The Black took the sky from everyone eventually, and Serenity Valley had shown him everyone had a bullet with their name on it. 

Mal still planned to die of old age before his bullet found him, but when had his plans ever gone smooth?

~~~~

It wasn't until Zoe realized he was bleeding all over the deck and slammed Serenity onto auto-pilot that Mal finally agreed to leave the bridge and get his knee looked after. River didn't take offense that he hadn't wanted to leave her alone on the bridge - she knew it wasn't personal. She knew too  _much_  and that was another thing Mal was carrying a load of guilt around for.

He had resigned himself to hauling his own baggage; he didn't feel right sharing the burden with anyone else.

Zoe stayed with him, as if sensing Mal was planning to try and run out of the infirmary. He tried not to bridle at her standing over him - it wasn't as if she didn't have plenty of his prior bad acts to support her decision to stay.

Simon tutted at the state of his knee, but mercifully kept his lectures to himself.

"It's no good." Zoe's voice was low as she leaned in closer to Mal, while Simon worked on Mal's knee. Mal tried to keep his yelping to a minimum so he could pay her proper attention. "It's all over the cortex. Any Firefly crew spotted anywhere, spendin' any kind of money's, gonna be prodded and poked and charged with as many bylaws and major and minor infringements as the Feds can pin on them. We need shelter."

Mal yelped for real as Simon dug out the last fragment of bullet. The doc didn't even bother pretending to look apologetic; he was used to the captain's outbursts when in pain. Mal was as stoic as they came on the battlefield, but as soon as he knew he was gonna live, he was gonna complain. He firmly believed it was manly enough that he'd gotten stabbed and shot. No point worrying over how manly complaining was. "We ain't got anywhere to take shelter. Not since-"

He didn't need to finish a lot of sentences with Zoe around - she'd known him that long - but this particular string of words was a sentence none of them would be able to finish for a long time.

"Then what do you suggest, sir?" Zoe looked worried. And Zoe didn't often look worried, so Mal knew it was likely past time to bury himself in the biggest hole he could find, put his hands over his ears and stay as quiet as he could for a minimum two weeks.

"There might be somewhere," he said at last, trying not to think too much about what he was about to do.

"Sir?"

Mal let out a long breath. "Didn't want to ever have to-" He sighed again. "But you're right, we need to lay low, and we're out of options." His face turned flint hard. "Set a course for Shadow."

Zoe's right eyebrow rose, almost imperceptibly. "One of the  _core_  planets?" She smiled toothily. "Why not? Let's just go hang out on Londinium. See the sights. Spend our hard-stolen cash. Let's get our lives ruined while going somewhere  _fun_." 

Mal winced as Simon busied himself with dealing with the wound. The doc was keeping his opinions to himself, obviously deciding to stay out of the way of the two army veterans. "I got a contact there," Mal said, slowly. "I ain't ever wanted to use her. But as you said, we ain't got no choice."

Zoe calmed instantly, all trace of humor gone. "I'll tell the pilot."

It turned out there wasn't any need to inform River. By the time Zoe set foot on the bridge, River was already plotting co-ordinates for Shadow. Zoe said the words anyway, as Inara quietly excused herself and walked down to the infirmary. Zoe remained on bridge in order to keep an eye on River.

Mal was scowling the second Inara appeared in the infirmary window. The thunder in his eyes was for the doc - as Simon was finishing his work on Mal's wound. He tried to wipe the scowl away as Inara stepped through the door, but he didn't quite succeed.

Luckily her expression was stormy enough for the both of them.

"Have you completely lost your mind?" she asked. She wasn't yelling, but that didn't matter - her strident tones had always made Mal feel like he was misbehaving at school. So he did what he'd always done back then, too - argue. He'd usually lost as a school boy, but at that point hadn't figured out that it would probably set the pattern for all his arguments for the rest of his life.

"No, just all hope of painless mobility in my left leg," Mal grunted.

Inara seemed flummoxed by his answer for half a second, but then continued as smoothly as if the pause had never happened. "Risking the entire crew like this? What are you thinking? We can make it back to the training house without any difficulty. The girls will look after us-"

Mal shook his head and busied himself yanking his pants leg down to cover his exposed leg and the bandaged wound. "I ain't gonna go putting your girls in danger," he grunted. "Their teacher, perhaps, but you made that choice your own self. And why exactly are you presuming I'm not heading us to a safe port?"

"So safe we've never used it before?" Inara snapped, her tone challenging him.

Mal actually blushed, which brought Inara up short again. She swallowed, off-guard, and then folded her arms defensively.

"'cause we haven't," Mal eventually managed.

Inara shook her head slightly, her dark curls bobbing angrily. "That might just be the worst excuse this side of Earth-That-Was' destruction."

"Thank you," Mal said, staggering to his feet and attempting to bow, but a flash of pain stopped him. He steadied himself and tried to stand up straight. While he was still off-balance, Simon took the opportunity to stab him in the arm with something he hoped was a painkiller.  _Or maybe some real fast poison_. Despite the amount of time and effort he put into the pursuit of it, fighting with Inara wasn't ever one of his top ten picks of how he liked to wile away an afternoon.

Of course in some weird sort of way, it was what he'd ended up missing most when she'd left. He tried to ignore the stomach ache which told him they'd be dropping her back at the Training House as soon as it was safe to fly again.

"Or do you just want to stop me from working?" Inara demanded.

Mal frowned. He could think about the future with Inara not there again, or he could snipe at her. His knee was still sore and he wanted to sleep for a week, but he couldn't let a fight lie, which was probably going to finish him off one of these days. "I ain't the indecisive one about my future," he said. "If it's teaching you want, we'll drop you off after the wind's cooled a little. And if it's whorin' you're after-" Inara's eyes flashed indignantly, "-as has been said. Shadow's a core planet. Got plenty of rich, hygienic men who should treat you more than right."

"What if I want to be a thief?" Inara said.

Mal felt the rush to insult her back, remembered he'd been the one to start the mud slinging and bit his tongue. "I'd ask you when you hit your head so bad as you'd stopped thinking clear," Mal drawled. 

He stepped closer to her, on the pretence of leaving the infirmary, but knowing she wouldn't move. Her eyes widened slightly, but she refused to rise to the bait.

"I told you that you don't have to decide yet. I ain't looking for any rent on your shuttle - you've helped us more than enough in the past to buy yourself free passage. This is just - a holiday - 'til you figure out what you do want. Decide what you want that will make you happy - just decide it - and I ain't gonna stop you or get in the way."

"That's not the point I was trying to make," Inara said, almost wearily.

"You were looking to argue my decision to make for Shadow," Mal said. "But you ain't the captain of this boat. I am. Shadow's safest for all."

She still didn't move out of his way.

He exhaled, folded his arms, looked away for a second, counted to ten, and then looked back at her. "If I let you listen while I wave my contact, will you quit bellyachin' at me?"

Inara was so surprised by his offer she finally stepped out of his path. Mal couldn't figure out what exactly convinced her, but he suspected her cooperation was why the entire crew had crowded onto the bridge for his wave to Shadow. If Inara got permission to listen in, then they all had the right.

Feeling very self-conscious, Mal pitched in the frequency, and waited for the wave to connect through.

After a couple of minutes that seemed to drag on for days, the screen eventually flashed and an elderly woman came on screen. She had long white hair and dark, serious brown eyes. She frowned at the screen for a long second, and then her mouth fell open slightly.

"Malcolm Reynolds." Her voice was low and tasted like warm honey on his tongue - friendly and welcoming despite the pitch of surprise that roughened her tone. "You rotten scoundrel! Nine years I declare, if it's a day. You could have sent a picture along with all those rambling text sprawls. I hardly recognise you anymore! When did you get so handsome?"

Mal tried to smile, but couldn't move past the butterflies in his stomach. One corner of his mouth twitched instead. "The day you stopped being so pretty," he said - the phrase punctuated by another twitch. The woman laughed, but Mal sobered. "We're in trouble, ma'am."

The woman narrowed her eyes. "You're in that wreck of a Firefly spamming up the cortext now, aren't you?"

"Her name's Serenity, Nana," Mal offered.

The woman - Nana - wrinkled her nose. "I should be surprised." Then she smiled, wide, all teeth. "I'll get Hornsy to fix up the barn. Low cloud cover tonight and all, should shield you fine. You remember the co-ordinates lock?"

"Reckon I do," Mal said, and a real smile cracked through all the worry and fear. "It's good to see you old woman."

Nana shook her small head. "Back at you, pickle," she beamed. "You'd better be staying a good long while."

"A coupla weeks at the outside," Mal said.

"You'll eat me out of house and home," Nana exclaimed.

Mal looked affronted. "You mean I'll eat you out of  _my_  house and home."

"Pah, semantics," Nana said, grinning. "I coulda had you declared well and dead nine years ago, and the house-"

"-woulda gone to the Feds," Mal replied, narrowing his eyes. "'sides, Feds would know you were lyin'. They've arrested me five times in the last seven years."

"Five? I oughta tan your backside when you get here," Nana said.

"But you won't."

"True." Nana narrowed her eyes in return. "All seven of you folks staying?"

Mal hadn't asked, but he felt safe in sayin', "All of us, at least for the short term," he said.

"It'll be nice to have folks round the place again," Nana admitted. "By my reckonin' you're nearly nine hours out. Barn'll be up and ready by the time you make planetfall." She grinned. "Such a handsome boy."

Mal rolled his eyes. "Bye, Nana. See you 'round twenty thirty, planetside."

"Food'll be on the table," Nana promised.

Mal nodded, and cut off the wave. Ignoring the questions pressing in on him from all sides, he looked directly to River. "Autopilot should get us most of the way, but you and me are gonna have to do some fancy steps the last couple of hours."

"Right hand red," River said solemnly. "Left foot green."

"Yes," Mal said, pretending he understood exactly what the girl was prattling on about. "Exactly."

River beamed and locked the autopilot on. 

It was a mark of how upended his life was these days that talking to River was the easy part of his job. Mal finally turned to the expectant faces ranged behind him. "Jayne, go start dinner. There'll be food on Shadow, but I don't feel like waitin' that long."

Jayne grunted, and eyeballed Mal curiously. "Now, pickle?"

"Now being the time right now, yes," Mal said. "Or, if you like it better, you can call me that again and we can discuss it further at the airlock."

Jayne clearly believed the threat, but just as clearly was fearful KP would mean he missed out on some fun.

"Faster dinner gets on the table, faster y'all find out my secret," Mal said. He turned his back on the rest of the crew, which put him face to face with River. The girl wrinkled her nose at him.

"Don't go spoiling my fun, now," he admonished. She pantomimed sewing her mouth shut. "Right. I've got captain-y things to go do," he said, to no one in particular, and with his head held as high as he could manage left the bridge, whistling.

~~~~

All things being equal, Mal never did get round to telling his tale at dinner. He told himself that he'd had every intention of talking, but the unexpected presence of spy satellites along their route had to take priority.

Truth was, he'd worked up a thousand different was to start his story, and every single word had died in his throat.

River had an uncanny sense as to where the motion sensors were deployed, and rolled the ship accordingly. Mal barely had to pay any attention to the operation, but holding the stick himself made him feel a little more in control of a situation that was proving to be anything but controllable. 

The longer he spent in Wash's chair, the more he understood how the man had always stayed so calm even during those times that pieces of the ship had been falling off around them.  _His fate was in his hands._  No matter what else happened, Serenity's fate rested had ultimately rested on Wash's skill - not some whim of the Black

Mal shook away the encroaching dark thoughts, realizing as they navigated a near miss that he was distracting River. His fumbling attempt to think of something happy in its place landed him on his memories of the woman he'd talked to over the wave a few hours earlier

"She hasn't changed," River said conversationally, as they entered an ion cloud, and she adeptly dodged the space fragments loitering around in it that the onboard sensors couldn't sense in the storm. "She looks the same as in your head."

A couple of months ago Mal had been jittery at the idea that River could - and had - been right through his mind. The more comfortable he got with the idea, the more complicated his emotions seemed to get. She was only recently free of the horrors the Alliance had visited on her mind - he didn't want to know she carried even a fragment of the sorrow he knew for the years that had destroyed so many of his nearest and dearest.

By the same token, he drew comfort from knowing that somebody besides himself and Zoe shared their outrage at the abuses the Alliance visited on their people over and over.

He'd felt shame at first that the girl would be able to see evidence of his cowardice over the years, but that shame had led him to see that he had a lot of happy memories mixed in with the sad, and maybe he owed it to River - and himself - to visit  _those_  places in his past more often.

Before everything else was the strength he drew from family. From his past on Shadow, through the war, to his present on Serenity, he'd never wanted for the company of people who cared about him. It was something River Tam hadn't always known in her life, and something Mal never wanted her to be without again.

"Being around you is shiny," River had said one day, when they were alone on the bridge together. Mal had frowned at her, thinking it was just a random bit of insanity, until she went on to explain. "Sure you've got darkness in you. Everyone has. Me too. Not as deep-dark as yours. I think I've got more evil in me. Or had. I don't remember. But you- you shine above your darkness, shine with rightness and honesty and that wipes out any of that dark that you're worrying hurts me. Even when you think dark, you worry that I can feel it too, and that outshines the hurt of the dark. You shine, captain."

Mal smiled at the memory, glancing over at her intense-featured face, and smiled at that too. River Tam was part of the crew, part of his  _family_. And - as only she understood - because of all that she was part of  _him_.

"You're remembering our shiny day," River said, cutting into his thoughts.

"I'm remembering more than I should," Mal grumbled. "Livin' in the past is a-"

"-waste of time," River finished - then winked at him. "Didn't have to see in your head to know that one, Captain. It's a very captain-y thing to say."

"Captain-y, eh?" Mal fiddled with a knob, cycling through local frequencies looking for indications their approach had been spotted. Most of them were silent, which told him volumes about the state of things on Shadow. 

One looked promising, but it was just a music channel of sorts. Mal turned it off anyway, not trusting the Alliance to not have put some fancy subliminal messages under the notes designed to make bombs like River explode suddenly and all over the place.

River grinned at him, and Mal wondered which of his tangled nest of thoughts had made her happy. "Getting close to the place we fall," she said. "Better get the others to strap in."

Mal was learning when to take River seriously, despite her poetic way of speaking. She still had moments when the madness seemed to have her firm in his grip, though more and more Mal was wondering if she was play-acting those moments to mess with their brains.

This wasn't one of those times. He grabbed the com and told his crew to hang on to something.

~~~~

River hadn't been wrong.

The low cloud cover blanketing Shadow had been a signal of something else - torrid storms in the upper atmosphere that swirled and battered at Serenity, reminding Mal how fragile his ship was.

He took over the controls the closer they got to the bottom, remembering the place so well that it bit at his heart for a second and he felt sick. He adeptly landed Serenity with River's help to balance her out in the wind, and then was sick for real as soon as they landed.

He forgotten about the drastic changes in pressure - exactly what his wrecked body didn't need, wouldn't be able to handle eventually.  _Space sickness._  The thought of what sort of permanent damage he might have done to himself made his stomach twinge, and made him throw up again. 

When he came back to himself, Mal realized someone's hand was rubbing his back. He twisted halfway round and saw Zoe standing in the door. River was behind him - she was the one rubbing his back.

"I can empathise with the throwing up feeling," she informed him solemnly.

Mal smiled tightly, and wiped his mouth. Out of all of them, River would most be able to identify with being trapped by something you couldn't control.

Minutes later, the seven of them were standing outside Serenity, surrounded on all sides by the walls and roof of a structure Mal knew as well as he knew each inch of his ship. With a grace born of absolute familiarity with his environment, Mal walked past his crew and to the wall. 

He flipped open a panel, hit a button, and then smiled at his crew's astonishment as Serenity quickly dropped from their sight, seemingly into nothingness. When she'd disappeared entirely from view, the floor closed over top of her.

Mal grinned, slapped the panel shut, then froze at the sound of a weapon being cocked. He sighed, bowing his head. "Jayne, it's all right - he's friendly."

"Friendly, am I?' the newcomer's voice said. "That ain't something you've called me for a good long while."

Mal turned around slowly and saw a weathered but cheerful face smiling at them all. The man was dressed in blue, too-large overalls, his face topped with a shaggy mane of white hair. "That's 'cause I ain't called you anything for a while, Hornsy," he pointed out. Mal strode forwards and engulfed the spry old man in a hug that lifted him clear off his feet.

"You're a sight for sore eyes, boy," Hornsy said as Mal set him back down. He looked over at Serenity's crew, his eyes twinkling appraisingly. "And who's this sorry lot?" He walked closer to Kaylee, and pinched her cheek - making her giggle. "This one's awful pretty. I got no objections if you cotton to leave her behind when you go."

Mal folded his arms and glared at the old man - and he wasn't the only one. The crew was very protective of Kaylee; Zoe's fingers tightened around the pouch Mal knew contained a very sharp throwing knife. Jayne scowled his best scowl, but it was Simon's reaction that caused Kaylee to flush and giggle girlishly - the doc actually  _growled_  at Hornsy. 

It was true the blush that followed such an uncharacteristic outburst under-cut his threat, but it earned him a whisper from Kaylee in his ear that made him almost trip over his own laces. Mal suddenly hoped he didn't end up in a room anywhere near the two of them.

"Be at peace, young 'un," Hornsy said, beaming in Simon's direction. "I don't have serious designs on your girl."

Kaylee dimpled even more if that was possible.

"I'm Kaylee," she said warmly, holding out her hand. "And this is Simon, he's a doctor, and-"

"-and we'll make the rest of the introductions inside where it ain't half so cold or dark," Mal said, overriding her cheerfulness. "Besides, the rest of the family wouldn't be too happy to miss out."

"Dorf's dead, Mal," Hornsy said abruptly. Mal frowned.

"I'm sorry. No one said anything." The humor of the previous few minutes had evaporated in the wake of cold, hard reality.

"Last week," Hornsy said matter-of-factly. Then, almost as if the old ranch hand had dished out all the truth he could stand, he winked at Kaylee. "Let's get your lot inside, young 'un. Nana's lookin' to give you a spanking."

Mal rolled his eyes, but joined the crew following Hornsy across the field, and into a house that wasn't quite as large as he remembered from his life before. He followed Hornsy with his eyes, although once again his feet knew the way - remembered which floorboard to miss because it was creaky, where to duck to miss the too-low beam.

When they got to the kitchen, Mal stopped short in the doorway. He knew he was holding up the rest of his crew, but he just had to stop and take in the sight.

The two women and one man standing around the fire looked so old. And he'd left them behind.

"No time for guilt now," River said in a low voice, and when he looked at her, standing in the kitchen of his childhood - to all outward appearances unsure and fragile and small - her smile gave him strength.

He strode forward, more confidence in his gait than in his heart. The screams that filled the space should have brought the attention of the Feds, they were so loud. The two women flung themselves forwards first - Nana on his left, the other - who Mal barely recognized as Belle - hugging on his right.

"You're scarred to high heaven, boy," Belle gasped. "Should have never let you go to war."

"Should have made  _you_  go, Belle," Mal returned. "We mighta stood a chance of winning."

Belle clipped him around the ear. There was no real power behind the rebuke, but he pretended it hurt anyway. "Careful," he complained. "Some idiot cut that off a year back - it's still sore."

No surprise to anyone, he'd spoken without a thought to the consequences. "Cut it  _off_?" Nana said, her voice pitching up higher. "I am going to tan your hide until you can't sit down, mister!"

"Don't you love me no more?" Mal said, his voice teasing and light.

"You know we do," Belle said, cooing. "You're right, Martha, he's gone and grown up real pretty, like his mama."

"Like his Nana, too," the man in the back said. Mal grinned at Kris. The two men managed to shake hands, even though Nana and Belle were still hanging off Mal.

"I can't breathe," Mal complained at them, and the two women finally released him.

Nana drew herself up proudly. "Introduce us then, Malcolm, or have you forgotten all your manners out there in the Black?" she scolded.

"I haven't had manners since I left you," Mal said. "Nobody around to keep me honest." He gestured at Zoe. "Zoe Washburne, my first mate. I've told you of her before. You'll not meet someone as loyal as her in a million years. Simon Tam, our ship's doctor. You might have seen his picture on the cortex a while back; he and his sister were fugitives - now he's just a pain..." He choked on what he was going to say, remembering just in time who he was speaking to. "Kaylee - Kaywinnit Lee Frye - is our mechanic. She can keep any machine up in the air with a piece of gum and a horseshoe."

"Cute and good with a machine? I may have to take back my promise to you doc," Hornsy cackled.

Mal rolled his eyes and forged ahead with the introductions. "River Tam. She's a reader. And a pilot. And a dancer. And - aw, hell, we ain't found anything yet she can't do. Jayne Cobb. Mean on the outside, gooey on the inside."

"Hey," Jayne grumped, but he didn't look ready to argue with the assessment.

"And the lady?" Nana asked, nodding in Inara's direction.

"Ain't no lady," Mal said, with a grin at Belle, who narrowed her eyes at him. "Inara Serra."

"Been a long time since we had a registered Companion in the house," Nana said graciously, walking over and grasping Inara's hands between her own. Inara, who had hung at the back of the group since landing on Shadow, now stepped forward into the light. She was puzzled for a moment by Nana's reaction to her, until she made the right connections.

"You were a Companion," Inara said softly, smiling. "It's always nice to meet someone from the Guild."

"Was a long time ago for me, child," Nana said. "Nigh on, oh, what is it? Fifty years?"

"More like a century," Mal quipped, deliberately looking everywhere in the kitchen but Inara's face. Inara looked over at him, trying to gauge from his reaction what was going on, but as usual when it came to Malcolm Reynolds, she was absolutely stumped.

She concentrated instead on smiling at Nana.

"I was house mistress at Sihnon, once upon a time," Nana sighed. Inara frowned slightly, her pretty brow crumpling. "Before your time, Sister Serra."

"Do accept my apologies," Inara said, with a small inclination of her head. "My memory is failing me of late, and I cannot recall a Nana on the list-"

Nana chuckled out loud, while Belle clipped Mal on the side of his head with some force, based on his reaction. "You wouldn't find a Nana on the scrolls, Inara. My name's Martha."

Inara's eyes widened. "Martha Lassek?" She spoke the name softly, reverently - awe on her face.

Nana smiled, showing that indefinable hint of grace that Inara recognized and warmed to immediately. It was a Companion's smile if ever she'd seen one.

"Then why're you called Nana?" Jayne asked. "Is it some kind of Companion nickname?"

"Heavens, no," Nana said, slipping out of the slightly formal tone she had fallen into when speaking to Inara. "I'm called Nana 'cause I'm Malcolm's Nana, boy." She turned to Mal, one eyebrow arched. "You ain't seen fit to tell them?"

Inara found her voice quicker than the others. "Madam Lassek, I believe it's not the only thing _Malcolm_  hasn't seen fit to tell us about his past."

Mal winced at the sore note in her voice. "Far as I'm concerned, my past ain't anybody's business but my own," he said, wincing again at the unexpected edge of defensiveness in his own voice.

"Yet you see fit to poke your overly large nose into our pasts with abandon," Inara spoke stiffly, but quickly. "And pass judgment on our choices."

"Unsuccessfully in your case," Mal said, edging his glance away from Inara, and scowling as he saw Belle, Hornsy and Kris laughing at him. "And my nose is just fine for my face, thank you very much."

"Your pa's nose was on the grand side too," Nana interjected with a small shrug.

"My past isn't relevant," Inara said primly.

"And mine is?" Mal stepped forward involuntarily. "I seem to recall an old Earth-that-was saying. Something about a pot, and a kettle, and the relative blackness of both-"

"If you're implying I'm anything like you, Captain Reynolds, than believe me, it will be hard for me to resist the urge to laugh," Inara responded heatedly.

"Laugh?" Mal didn't want to be doing this, but once they got going this thing between he and Inara typically took on a life of his own. "I let you into my home and you're bein' the one all out of sorts when I'm the one putting the last people planetside who I give seventy shades of  _shit_ about in potential danger, and you're-"

"SOUP!" Kaylee flushed when she realized she'd bellowed it in her eagerness to stop Mal and Inara's bickering. "Carrot soup," she continued gamely, realizing that everyone was staring at her. Simon reached across and squeezed her hand reassuringly. She flashed him a grateful look in return. "Smells awful nice."

"And here I've completely forgotten my manners," Nana exclaimed. "Come and sit down, all of you, you look famished."

Not waiting to be told twice, Kaylee grabbed Simon and yanked him down into a seat, then pulled River into the chair on her other side - protecting herself with a Tam on either side in case Hornsy wasn't as friendly as Mal had indicated. The others followed suit, with Nana and Belle shifting their chairs at an angle to the soup pot, so they could portion it out while still being sat down.

Mal remained standing. He looked at his feet, and then looked at Nana, and when he spoke, his voice was rough. "Nana-" he said.

Nana looked up, midway through spooning out a bowl of soup, the elegance and precision in her movements leaving no one any doubts to her thorough Companion training, however long ago it had been. She seemed to age, though, in the second she caught Mal's gaze and held it. "You should eat first."

"Same room?" Mal asked, determined not to be swayed.

Nana nodded, and Belle was suddenly looking at him with such tearful eyes that Mal tore himself away from her gaze, and found himself looking at Inara instead. She was staring at him openly, trying to suss out everything that wasn't being said in the room. Mal shook his head at her briefly, and to his relief Inara seemed to understand. She lowered her gaze.

"Take her some soup, Malcolm," Nana said, holding out a bowl. Mal nodded, took the bowl, and left.

~~~~

Inara sipped sedately at the soup, the hot liquid soothing her stomach and making her feel sleepy and comfortable. Around her, the human rituals of getting to know each other were proceeding apace.

"I've been on Serenity a good few years now," Kaylee was explaining to Nana, her eyes bright and eager. "Mal hired me 'cause I fixed her up when his original mechanic couldn't."

"Such a gift for someone so young," Nana exclaimed. The old woman's body language was fully engaged, projecting the belief that Kaylee was the most fascinating person she'd ever laid eyes on. Inara was marvelling at the skill and training on display in front of her, until she caught the wink in her direction. Nana had realized she was watching.

"Oh, no, it ain't," Kaylee argued. "Not as special as Simon. He's a fully trained surgeon. Ought to be the head of some fancy medical symposium now too, only-" She faltered, and looked at Simon guiltily. "I'm boasting about you again, ain't I?"

"It wouldn't be so embarrassing if you let me boast about you too occasionally," Simon said, his cheeks just as pink as hers. Inara scolded herself for ever having any doubts the two were well suited to each other. "'sides, I know it's taken me a lot longer than it should have done, but Serenity's home. I couldn't imagine ever being elsewhere."

Kaylee beamed.

"Y'all sound like you love the ship," Nana said, her voice almost dreamy. "And Malcolm treats you right?"

"Absolutely," Kaylee said, ever loyal. "He's honest and kind and stubbornly sticks to his morals more'n anyone I know. He can be grumpy, and he makes people cry on occasion, but his heart's always in the right place."

"Malcolm was never one to talk about his feelings," Belle said, shaking her head. "I remember the day that heifer kicked him when Jorgan drove it the wrong way. Boy broke two ribs and barely made a sound. Next summer? He broke a leg, and still hiked home on it with just a tree branch for support." She made a tutting sound that demonstrated more love than disapproval. "We had to teach the little rascal to be vocal whenever he hurt himself. He didn't want to cause us any worry."

Simon snorted with laughter. "I can tell you Madam Lassek, that he's learned how to be plenty vocal when he's hurt."

"Good to hear," Nana said cheerfully. She looked up, hearing faint footsteps overhead, and sighed. "Kris, can you fetch the good stuff?"

Kris nodded, pushing the chair away from the table with a squeak. He crossed to a cabinet and retrieved a large bottle of  _Blue Sun_ whiskey. River yelped on seeing the label, and immediately buried her nose in her soup - spooning it furiously into her mouth. Jayne's eyes lit up, but immediately dulled as he realized the whiskey wasn't going to be passed around.

Nana poured a very large glass of the whiskey, and set it in front of the empty seat between Belle and Zoe. A few seconds later, Mal entered - his face more gaunt than usual. He sat in the chair without saying a word, and automatically swallowed the whiskey straight.

"One more," Nana warned. She poured him another, and Mal silently downed it - his eyes dark and hard. He pushed the glass back to her, shook his head, got up and went to the sink, splashing water liberally over his face. He turned back, couldn't meet anyone's eyes, and then strode over to Nana. He kissed her on the cheek.

"My room still free?" he asked, his voice low.

"Of course," Nana said, mirroring his volume.

Mal touched her cheek briefly, turned, nodded at his crew, pet Belle's hair for a second, and then strode out of the room taking the whiskey bottle with him. Nana shook her head slowly, a moment of unguarded worry crossing her expression.

Just as quickly it was gone. "There's plenty of rooms," she said to the rest of them. "We'll set you up in the warmest ones."

"Uh, we kinda didn't bring any nightclothes-" Kaylee said, blushing again. Inara suspected the girl had quit wearing nightclothes for good since Simon had taken up permanent residence in her bunk, but appreciated her boldness in raising the question.

"I've got plenty," Nana said, rising graciously from the table. A trunk in the corner of the kitchen revealed a pile of white night clothes. She smiled wistfully, lost in memory. "Used to be a lot more people around here. It's gonna be nice to see the old house breathing again."

"We'll be able to get our stuff from Serenity tomorrow though, right?" Kaylee asked, her voice doubtful.

"Aw, hell," Nana said, looking annoyed. "I shoulda told Malcolm. The hidden passageway through to the barn hidey hole blocked up years back. And if we disrupt your ship now..." 

She shook her head when Kaylee's face fell. "If there's anything urgent, it's possible, just tricky. Don't fret, pet, we've more than enough clothes in the wardrobe for all of you." She tossed a conspiratorial smile in Inara's direction. "Got some mighty pretty stuff lying dormant too."

Inara inclined her head, understanding that Martha was offering her old Companion clothes to her. She felt a small thrill of excitement amidst all the confusion she was otherwise feeling as she tried to fit bits and pieces together from what had been said and implied. She was still trying to finish the jigsaw while the others helped clear up the table and pull out nightclothes.

This was Mal's house. The house he grew up in, and by the sounds of it, the house he still owned. If he still owned a property after the war, wouldn't he have lived in it?  _Mayhap the fact Shadow's a core planet puts him off..._

And there was something -  _someone_  - else in the house that made Mal withdraw worse than one of their drawn-out kick-up dust-hurling fights.  _But who?_  

Nana had told Mal to take  _her_  some soup. Was she some old fallen war comrade?  _Zoe would likely have looked a little less baffled, if that were the case._  A disabled sibling unable to get downstairs? Maybe Mal was the one who caused their accident - it would be like him to carry the guilt for something like that close to his chest.  _An insane wife locked in the attic?_

Inara mentally berated herself for reading too much trashy fiction from the cortex, and forced herself to focus instead on their surroundings. She hadn't even started thinking over why Mal reacted so badly to her work when he had somebody like Martha Lassek as his Nana was threatening to put her down with a crippling headache.

Upstairs was dominated by a long corridor, boasting multiple doors. Zoe and River were shown a room with twin beds at one end. Their partnership was more and more in evidence these days; Zoe hadn't wanted to sleep alone since Wash's death, and River - despite her initial curiosity - had no interest in being any closer to Simon and Kaylee's more... _athletic_...night time endeavors than she could help.

There was nothing sexual between the women - that was something Inara would have picked up on very quickly. There was comfort though, and a chance for both of them to someday heal.

Simon and Kaylee were escorted to a double room at the very end of the hall, away from - Inara suspected - everyone else. Jayne was given a simply massive room with a very large king bed and a display of old rifles. He'd been so overcome, he'd kissed Nana on the cheek.

Once they were alone, Nana turned to Inara and passed her a soft pile of material. "This was one of my daughter's nightdresses," the old woman said, her voice rough with emotion. "From...before." The smile on her lips didn't quite reach her eyes. "Your room's back up those stairs we passed, 'fore the twin room the two girls are in. Go up two flights - it'll be the door directly in front of you."

Inara nodded. She guessed the other rooms along the corridor were likely taken up as storage, or as bedrooms for the other four (or five) residents in the house.

"You been flying with my grandson long?" Nana asked, her tone comfortably conversational as they walked back to the stairs leading up to Inara's designated room.

"More than a year," Inara said, omitting the fact she'd left and was probably only now on Serenity for a short...  _holiday..._ as Mal had put it. "Off and on."

Nana nodded sagely. "A couple of times in my career I thought about hopping on board a Firefly. It's a good way to escape."

Inara glanced sideways at Nana, raising one eyebrow slightly to let the old woman know she'd seen the bait and had no intention of rising to it. "I loved Serenity the first time I laid eyes on her," she said instead. "She's a very special ship. I think we all love her dearly."

"And my grandson?"

Taken on its face, the question seemed to be asking how much Mal loved Serenity, but for a moment Inara found herself wondering if Nana was asking if she loved Mal as much as she loved his ship.

"He's dottier than all of us put together about the ship," she said, choosing to answer the easier question. "One time, when the hull got breached and we almost ran out of air, he insisted on staying. Your grandson can be the most stubborn pig-goat you ever saw." Inara could hear the fondness creeping into her own voice when she talked about Mal, but told herself it was only because she was trying to give Nana a good impression of her grandson. "Serenity's...  _home_."

Nana looked at Inara with narrowed eyes, and Inara prayed for a second that the old woman wouldn't pose the question again. It was very difficult for one Companion to lie to another, and doubly so when a House Priestess was involved. 

Thankfully, Nana let her off the hook, "Mal's good to you all, then?"

"The best," Inara replied quickly. "Although he's more than a mite irritating at times."

"More than a mite, I definitely reckon," Nana said. "You'll forgive me if I don't take you further Sister - my old bones aren't up for walking too many stairs, and my knees definitely ain't right for kneeling anymore." She flashed Inara a wicked smile. "Sleep tight,  _mei-mei_."

Inara nodded. "Thank you so much for your hospitality."

Nana laughed. "Not a bother. My heart's been aching for Malcolm to be ready to come home." She stood for a moment, leaning against the wall, looking so wistful again Inara's heart leapt with sympathy for her. "Now he's here, and I can scarce believe it. We've missed him so much and now he's here, and oh-" 

She smiled at Inara. "I should be the one thanking you. We all thought from his letters that his heart would never heal after the war. Now I see he's on the way, and I suspect I've you to thank for that. Sleep well."

Inara barely had time to blink before the old woman disappeared down the stairs. It was probably a good thing - Inara realized she was suddenly blushing far more than necessary. She was likely projecting, but it had seemed to her like Nana was implying that  _she_  had something to do with Mal's heart and its healing.  _Nothing could be further -_ Inara stopped that train of thought in its tracks. Grasping the silky material to her chest, she climbed the stairs.

The bathroom she found at the top was large and spacious. A silky crimson hanging decorated one wall - intricately woven in a pattern Inara recognised from House Madrassa, her old Training House on Sihnon. She touched it, feeling sad but connected to her past, and realized it must be similar to what Mal was feeling - this odd sense of standing in your past and yet not belonging to it anymore.

Inara quickly washed, deliberated for a second, and then changed into the nightdress that Martha had given her. She didn't know whether her room would have a lock on it, and in this new environment - despite the initial feeling of security - she felt a little vulnerable. The nightdress was beautiful, and allowed Inara to slip her small personal dagger into a small silk fold into the material, one she suspected might have been created just for the purpose.

Bundling her clothes to her, she finished her toilette by using one of the sprays on the sink - a fruity lavender mix that appealed to her senses. It was a touch that made her feel a little more at calm and sure of herself before she left the bathroom.

The house had gone darker and quieter in the few minutes she'd been busy in the bathroom; Inara looked nervously down the corridor for the stairs to the next level and the room Nana had said would be hers.

A soft, moaning sound reached her ears from somewhere close by as she reached the foot of the staircase. Panicked, Inara quickly hurried up the stairs, drawing reassurance from the reality of the wood creaking under her feet.

Nana had been right - there was only one door ahead of her. Inara sighed gratefully as she grasped the handle and opened the room. She had a moment's confusion at seeing the room was already lit, but hurried in anyway.

She froze a moment later, her cheeks on fire with embarrassment.

The room was large, with a huge carved wooden bed that occupied the middle of the space. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a skylight framed starlight supporting the flickering candlelight that illuminated the room.

What had made her blush, was that  _Mal_  was in the bed, apparently naked (at least to his waist).

"Inara-" he stammered. He ran a hand awkwardly through his hair, but didn't pull the blankets up any further to cover himself, which reassured Inara. She knew through her training and study of body language that had he been completely naked, he most likely would have moved to cover up what skin he had on show. 

Although Mal broke all kinds of rules governing "typical" male behavior, so Inara realized she didn't really know for sure what was going on.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly, trying to cover her nervousness. "Nana -. Your Nana said I just had to go up two flights of stairs, and the door would be straight ahead of me."

"Ah," Mal said, understanding lighting his expression. "Don't worry. It's an easy mistake. This is the third floor."

"We were on the first floor when she said two flights up," Inara said, frowning.

Mal frowned, and shifted further up in the bed - careful to keep the blankets with him as he moved. "That's strange, she's normally extremely precise-" He shut up then, and frowned. "Unless-" He paused, and then closed his eyes, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Unless what?" Inara crossed the floor, and she folded her arms, staring him down even though his eyes were closed. 

He moved his face in her direction, feeling her stare through his closed lids, and almost sheepishly said, "Unless she thinks this is a... normal sleeping arrangement for us."

Inara's eyes widened slightly. "What did you  _say_?" she accused angrily.

Mal held up a hand and opened his eyes wide. "Whoa, there. I didn't say a thing about you that you didn't hear!"

"Then why would you-?" Inara couldn't finish the sentence.

"Maybe with the fightin' an' all," Mal said in a rush, his cheeks taking on a pink tinge to complement her deep red. He spread his hands helplessly. "For an old woman, she always had a sick sense of humour."

Inara frowned.

"There's plenty of nice rooms on the second floor," Mal offered awkwardly, realizing Inara wasn't going to speak to that. "I'm sure I could help you-"

"No, uh-uh, no way," Inara said quickly, crossing the floor and sitting with a thump on the bed. "I am not going down there again." The memory of the darkness and the odd sounds made her shiver. She looked at him, then down at the bed, and then back at him again. "Bed's big enough. We're both grownups." Her mouth twisted up in a wry grin. "I'm at least grown up enough for both of us."

Mal inhaled sharply as he caught onto her meaning. "Hey now," he said, "just 'cause you got me in a vulnerable spot right now does not mean-"

"Just sleeping," Inara said, narrowing her eyes. "And as long as you don't kick me out of the bed or roll on me during the night we should have no problem whatsoever."

Mal looked at her, eyebrows tilting upwards. "I don't kick girls," he said mutinously.

Inara weighed up the pros and cons of what she was about to do and quickly calculated that Mal - next only to Zoe and River - was the safest person to be around in a creepy place like this. She shivered at the memory of the darkness, which Mal took to mean she was cold.

"You should get under the covers then," he said gruffly. "If you're staying."

Inara nodded, and slipped as quickly under the blankets as she could. He looked at her for a few seconds, and she looked at him, accusingly, as if daring him to say anything. Eventually, he just muttered something under his breath, and turned out the lights. 

Inara lay back on her pillow, listening to him trying to breathe evenly, and just as she was starting to think it would take her forever to fall asleep like this, the darkness took her and she was gone.

~~~~

Light splintered through her vision, waking Inara slowly and gently. She'd had the most amazing night's sleep, including a dream about Serenity's crew going to Shadow, and that Mal of all people had a Nana who'd been a Companion like her, and-

Inara froze for a second as she realized she wasn't alone in the bed, and then forced herself to relax. Frowning, she tried to reassemble pieces of the night before. To the best of her recollection she'd never lost this much control with a client before. Her head was still on his chest where she'd fallen asleep on him - a grievous breach of protocol for a Companion of her skills and standing.

It was a nice chest, granted. There was a little scar that she didn't remember caressing, but she knew she most definitely would have under the circumstances, and a downy trail of brown hair that made something deep inside her come alive. The slow curl of morning lust unfurling low in her belly was a surprise - but not an unwelcome one. Wherever she was, she was happy and safe...so safe. An arm was curled around her, heavy but warm, it was no wonder she'd slept so well. Whoever she'd fallen asleep on made her feel  _safe_. Made her feel like she was  _home_.

Still befuddled, Inara silently bemoaned the fact that she'd have to get up, apologise profusely for the error (an error such as this she hadn't made in years. Well, okay, seven months, and it was because the man - much to her eternal chagrin - had reminded her so abruptly of Mal that she'd only charged him half rate and ended up apologizing to him for exhausting him over the course of the night...although apparently he hadn't been too upset about it) and then leave this client, he-of-the-nice-warm-body-and-pleasant-smell, to the service of other Companions for a good long while. 

Inara was not a morning person - never had been. As such it did take a while for her brain to click into proper working order. Like it was doing now, with painful results.

Shadow wasn't a dream. They were hiding out because of a heist gone bad. Mal  _did_  have a Nana who was a Companion. She'd shared a room - and a bed! - with Mal because of some childhood fear of the dark that had risen again last night, and despite her strict caveats and addendums for the bed-sharing, and despite the fact the bed really was large enough for four people, they'd somehow migrated together in the haze of sleep.

And somehow she couldn't seem to make herself move away...even though she could tell Mal was as awake as she was now.

She raised her head as far as she could, meeting his sleepy but shocked expression, and struggled to find something to say. 

After several minutes, in which she spectacularly failed to recover the tattered shreds of her dignity and self-respect, she buried her face in Mal's shoulder - at the point where it started to curve into his neck, and groaned.

Mal didn't react for a second, and then he started to chuckle. It was infectious, and before long they were both laughing. After a few minutes, Inara put out a hand to push herself free. It almost worked - she managed to get herself up off his arm, so he could free himself, and he did. 

The difficulty came when her movement landed her on the pillow; putting their faces so lose that the laughter died. It was one of  _those_  gazes when their eyes met, the heart-stopping ones. The one where neither of them could move, each of them waiting with bated breaths for either the other to snap and break the stalemate by taking that final step, or to say something awkward, something mean, something flippant.

To her amazement, it wasn't any of those things that Mal finally used to break the silence. "Mornin'," he said, with a sleepy semi-smile that Inara found impossibly attractive. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes," she reluctantly admitted. "Yourself?"

"Fine, 'cept some idiot lay on my arm and it's half-asleep," Mal said. She started to bristle, but the words carried no ill-feeling - more a soft teasing tone that Inara liked the sound of. He made a show of vigorously rubbing his arm to regain the feeling in it.

"This is  _your_  room?" Inara asked suddenly, looking up at the ceiling, all the patterns in the grain and whorls of the wooden beams.

"Since I was nine," Mal said wistfully, leaning his head back to look up at the ceiling himself. "Ma gave it to me for my ninth birthday, said I needed somewhere big enough for all my books." He shook his head. "She always-" His voice trailed away. "Ain't enough room on Serenity for them anyhow. Guess they belong here."

Inara looked around at the hundreds of books, feeling on some level that she should be surprised that Mal had read a lot, at least as a child.  _Yes, I've read a poem_ , spoke her memory, and she abruptly felt bad for doubting his intellect.  _Then again, he's done a real good job of hiding it over the years._

"It's a nice room," Inara said.

Mal suddenly looked uncomfortable. "I'll scope out the other rooms for tonight. You can stay here. As I said, there's plenty-"

The horrid sound from last night reared in the back of Inara's mind again, and she abruptly didn't like the idea of Mal sleeping closer to it any more than she relished the idea of herself sleeping closer to it. 

"No," Inara said, reluctantly, "I'm not going to kick you out of your own room. I'm sure there'll be another room that's-"

"Or you could stay," Mal said, the words running so closely together that he must have just blurted them out, and as Inara edged a look at him, he looked a little confused at realizing he'd spoken them. "Here, I mean. It's like camping, a holiday, like sharing a tent."

 _There's that word again, holiday. Like my holiday on Serenity, where I can pretend I'm home for good._  Inara thought for a second.  _So if staying here...is a holiday too... I could pretend that Mal and I... Just for a little while_.

"Sorry," Mal said, shifting back a little in the bed, and looking away from her. "Guess it's just my mornin' brain. It don't like the early hours as a rule."

"A farm boy like you?" Inara smiled slightly as Mal's eyes darted to hers. He'd never intimated any such thing, although most of them on board has suspected something rural in his past from his experience with cattle and the like, but she'd seen enough of the fence work as they walked to the house the previous night to realize this house was part of a farm.

" _Ranch_  boy," Mal corrected, but with a soft edge to his tone, like he didn't really want to talk about it. Inara realized she didn't want him on edge today. Not when she was on... vacation.

"As for the room thing-" Inara said, very quickly. "If it's just for a couple of weeks, and you promise to wash..."

"Hey!"

She beamed sweetly. "And we keep it quiet from the others-"

"Agreed," Mal said quickly, grinning, and then his face took on a more serious cast. When he spoke again his voice carried more honesty than Inara had heard from him in a while, 

"Was nice sharing a room with someone," he admitted. "Didn't want to be alone. Not here." He looked down, and away, and then back at her, his eyes still burning with a dark, unspoken truth.

"I didn't want to be alone either," Inara said, so quickly that she almost couldn't believe she'd confessed it. 

"So..." she added after a brief comfortable silence, and because she was an idiot, or needed a fight with Mal more than she needed sanity or oxygen, she pushed where he didn't really want to be pushed. Of course there was always the option that he  _wanted_  to talk about it and  _needed_ to be pushed in order to do it. 

Inara felt such a ridiculous thrill at the idea she didn't mind either option being true. "Ranch boy, huh?"

"Was," Mal said. "Not no more." He looked away, out of the window, out to the spread of fields and the glimmer of a large core city in the distance, the dance of lights luring folk towards it. Inara had always felt a tug towards the core - it was glamour and glitz the likes of which most sane folk would want for themselves.

Out here in this rural setting however, she felt the small flutter of possibility in her chest. Like maybe, somehow, she could  _belong_  here...

Against all odds, Mal kept talking. A good Companion would have been able to direct the conversation, using subtle prods and suggestions to get the information she needed, but Inara was on vacation, and she'd never liked the idea that Mal's words would be directed or forced.

"Most of Shadow got burned up in war," he said. "When Alliance claimed it, they just wide re-terraformed most of the surface." He shifted uncomfortably, chin bowed almost to his chest. "They kicked off those who couldn't 'ford to stay on what was about to become a core world, and made it into a palace for the rich and the richer."

He snorted softly. "It's the only thing that let this one small piece of land survive almost untouched. Large wads of cash, and the fact that most of those here stayed loyal to the Alliance." Inara shivered under the weight of his memories, pulling the blankets higher up around her shoulders to keep warm.

"Nana declared the house an Alliance friendly place, same week as I volunteered for-" Mal managed to say volunteer, but couldn't get out  _war_  in the same sentence. "Anyhow, come the end it meant she and the others were safe. "

"Why haven't you been to see them since the war ended?" Inara asked.

Mal had started retrieving his clothes from the floor around the bed. "This place was free as the sky," he said, pulling his pants on. "You ought to have seen it 'fore..." He half-smiled, still not quite looking directly at her. "Now anything it was has been destroyed by 'civilisation'. Ain't Shadow no more. Buildings are here, people are here, but it's lost the heart of what it was." 

He reached out, touched the wooden walls, and looked longingly out the windows a second, at the barn where Serenity was hidden. "Does that make any sense at all?" He looked back at her suddenly, trying to gauge her reaction. 

"All the sense in the 'verse," Inara said, with a soft, understanding smile.

Mal looked at her with an uncertainty that almost made her blush. "I'll be downstairs," he said, turning to leave.

"I- uh-" Inara swallowed as Mal looked back at her, his hand paused on the door handle. "I, uh, I'm not accustomed to wearing clothes I wore the day before," she said, almost stuttering, feeling like her words were an apology. "Your Grandmother-"

"Just call her Nana," Mal interrupted. "Everyone does."

"Nana," Inara repeated gamely, really working to fight the blush now. It felt awkward to refer to somebody as powerful and respected as Martha Lassek as  _Nana_. She swallowed again, and smiled brightly. "She said she had some clothes I could use, but I don't really want to walk around like this-" She waved one bit of the satin-y fabric of her nightdress at Mal to illustrate. "-in front of Jayne in the morning."

Mal grinned. "I'd be nervous my own self," he said, "and I ain't opposed to wearing such frippery." He then walked over to the bed, directly at Inara, and for one heart-stopping second she thought he was going to lean forward and kiss her, until he bent down, and pulled out a small trunk from under the bed, under where she was lying.

Her heart painfully thudding in her ears, Inara looked down curiously as Mal flipped open the small trunk. A musty smell of what she recognised as camphor floated out from the trunk. Inara couldn't see exactly what Mal was rummaging through, but it was probably cloth, as it made no sound.

"You're quite small," Mal muttered, almost beneath his breath, and this time, Inara did blush. He pulled a length of black material out from the trunk, and slid it closed.

When he handed it over, Inara smoothed it down - looking it over. It was a black dressing gown, a thin but opaque cotton material, and it looked about her size. She looked over the top of it, a small smile on her face.

"Thank you," Inara said.

Mal suddenly seemed awkward. "It was mine. When I was sixteen. Uh, it's been washed, I'm fair certain."

Inara nodded, and slipped down the blankets, to put the robe on, and smiled widely as Mal turned around to keep her some space. She stood up behind him, tying it, and it fit her snugly, if a mite overlarge. She coughed quietly, and he turned, taking in her appearance quickly

"Ain't you cute," Mal said, with a large grin. Inara rolled her eyes, and poked him in the shoulder.

"You were a midget when you were sixteen," she teased in return.

Mal's eyes narrowed, but then he relaxed - giving up the opportunity for a fight. "True. Shall we-?" He inclined his head towards the door.

Inara smiled, and as they left the room, she took one last look at it, to preserve it in her memory.

~~~~

Mal hadn't slept so well in a long time, and certainly hadn't expected to sleep so well in his childhood home. He'd spent so long hating it after the war, knowing its destruction was partially his fault because he wasn't good enough, he didn't believe in the cause enough to save his home...

Then Inara had turned up in his room, obviously sent there by Nana. Mal knew the old girl probably genuinely thought he and Inara had a  _Thing_. Well, they did have a  _Thing_. It was an awfully odd  _Thing_ , to be sure, but a  _Thing_  none the less. 

And a  _Thing_  that had gotten a mite odder overnight. None of which made it the type of  _Thing_ Nana thought it was.

And somehow Inara had stayed, and it hadn't been horrible, and now if he  _tried_  to tell Nana that the  _Thing_  was just unresolved conflict, then she'd  _look_  at him, in that way she always used to when he protested as a kid that he did  _not_  like Mei-Lin from the Coppertop Ranch. 

They were quiet as they walked down the steps. Mal was so hyper-aware of her presence that he couldn't think of a single thing to say, but for once the silence wasn't uncomfortable. Again without consciously thinking about where he was going, he headed towards the kitchen and pushed open the door.

The kitchen was a hive of activity; Kaylee sat at the table, being waited on hand and foot by Simon and Hornsy; each man trying his best to out-do the other. Jayne was shovelling his mouth full of oatmeal and fruit like it was the first real food he'd seen in a month. 

Zoe was dividing her attention neatly between breakfast, cleaning her weapon, and chatting up a wide-eyed Belle, and River - to no one's surprise - looked to be attempting a recreation of the Lassiter they'd once stolen with her porridge, to a perfect half-scale. 

Kris was asleep in his chair, his mouth wide open. River would occasionally take breaks from her sculpting to pitch pieces of her fruit in his maw. It was so comfortable and domestic that Mal couldn't help the tears that almost came to his eyes.

Although he'd deny the reaction with his last breath if confronted...

"Mornin'," Nana greeted, bustling up to Mal and pushing bowls of oatmeal into each of their hands. Mal shuffled over to the table and sat next to River. Inara took her seat opposite him. Mal helped himself to orange juice, noting that Kris and Hornsy were gathering down some bags from the wall, and that Nana was putting some outdoor shoes on.

"Mal," she said, "Hornsy, Kris and I gotta go into town for a spell to pick up some more food for this bunch. I'd take you with us, but don't want the 'liance to get the wrong idea."

Mal nodded heavily.

"You show 'em the wardrobe so they can get some proper clothes," Nana said. "Rig's all set up for your ship. We can probably get your stuff off tomorrow some time." She ruffled his hair affectionately. "Sorry pickle. We'll be back in a couple of hours. Promise."

Mal leaned into her touch, drawing comfort from the gesture. Nana looked over his head. "Belle, make sure they behave," she said.

"Will do," Belle nodded.

Mal stared for a few seconds at the door after they'd left, and then returned to his oatmeal. River, beside him, was still making her model of the Lassiter, singing something under her breath that turned out to be " _there were two in a bed"_  over and over. He frowned at her, but she kept singing quietly, even when she turned and grinned at him, and he finally snapped.

"Would you shut the gorram hell up?" Mal ground out, and River broke off, giggling. Mal was aware all eyes were on him, and he gamely stared them down. "She was bein' freakish."

" _And the little one said_ -" River continued, loudly this time. Mal narrowed his eyes and put his hand on his gun. She narrowed her eyes in response, and went to put her fingers on the nearest gun - which was unfortunately the oatmeal Lassiter, and it fell to pieces when she picked it up. 

Her face fell at the same time. "The foolish girl built her house upon the sand."

The words rang bells in Mal's mind, reminding him of Sunday school and a whole other host of things he didn't want to think about, so he frowned at River again instead, and noticed she had oatmeal in her hair. Without thinking, he reached forward and pulled it out. River smiled at him. Ignoring Inara's sudden stare, Mal flicked the oatmeal at the table, and tried to return to his breakfast.

"I was beginning to think all these stories about what a good man you were was nothing but moondust," Belle said.

Mal looked up at the old woman. "I'm not good. I'm a scoundrel and a mean old man."

Belle puffed herself up, clearly affronted. "If you're old, what does that make me?"

"Ancient," he offered with a shrug. "Pre-historic maybe?"

"You shouldn't be so cheeky in front of your girl," Belle said, admonishing Mal with a wag of her finger.

Mal was about to protest, when he realized what she'd said. "My girl??"

"Yeah, your girl. I mean, I assumed; you've been so stoic in the sprawls you sent-" Belle looked between Mal and River, confused. "River's not yours?"

Mal looked at her curiously. "...mine? Well, she's my pilot..." He frowned at Belle in confusion as River laughed a little, and took a long draught of his drink.

"I meant, your daughter," Belle explained.

Mal sprayed orange juice out in a cloud all over Belle as River and Simon both after an incredulous moment spluttered into giggles.

Belle's face fell. "Oh. I don't know. You just treat her special, like, an' she really does look like you and Inara..."

Jayne burst out laughing first. "Inara," he chuckled, shaking his head. "Why, those two would have to be drugged up to the eyeballs just to stop the fightin' long enough to get to the sexin'..."

Mal's head thudded to the table, and he steadfastly tried to ignore the giggling coming from his crew. He lifted his head eventually, knowing his face was ruddy, but trying not to care. "Belle-" he said, his voice strangled. "You're crazier than that one-legged cat that got into the mead that spring." He looked at River, who was still busy laughing her ass off, and risked a look at the others for their reaction.

Inara wasn't even blushing, damn her. Mal wished fervently for her control, and he narrowed his eyes at Belle, inwardly spluttering. "I woulda been fourteen! I ain't that old- And I ain't even- I mean, Inara?"

"Hey," Inara said, her voice too low for Mal's liking, a tone full of controlled amusement, "what do you mean 'I mean, Inara?'" She mimicked his helpless tone. " _You're_  the one being disgusted by the idea of having a child with  _me_?"

"That's not what I-" Mal blurted furiously, wishing he had his gun handy as Belle joined his crew in their laughter.

"You mean you  _would_  have children with me?" Inara said, her voice rising dramatically, a small grin on her face as she exchanged an amused glance with Kaylee, whose small shoulders were shaking in complete mirth. "Why Captain Reynolds - this is so sudden!"

"No, I- Gorammit! I mean, I wouldn't have had children with you  _eighteen years ago_! You'd have been what, six years old?" Mal sank his face into his hands, not even wanting to look at her face now.

"So if not then, what about now?"

Mal got to his feet, and straightened himself, tilting his chin. "Don't reckon that's the sort of thing we should be discussing in front of the crew," he said with as much dignity as he could muster. With a quick, determined movement, he grabbed Inara's wrist and tugged her out of the room behind him.

Inside, the crew watched as Mal dragged a laughing Inara outside, before he proceeded to burst into laughter himself. They watched the two laughing madly, before turning to each other.

"Sure ain't going to make no children that way," Jayne observed.

"That's what you think," River replied airily.

Outside, Mal finally had to steady himself on the fence he was laughing so hard. He didn't know what the hell had happened in there, but right at that moment, he didn't give any kind of a crap. It felt  _good_. He hadn't been happy for a damn long while, and Zoe had been laughing too - just as hard as the others - even though he knew the issue of children was a bitter one for her.

Gulping air, he turned with heated cheeks to Inara, who was herself leaning against a fence, beset with laughter. Her eyes were glowing, and a smirk still fell across her face even though she'd run out of energy to keep laughing. Mal's ribs hurt from it all, but he was smiling too.

"So," Inara said, almost flirtily as she stepped closer to him, hooking a hand through one of his suspenders, "you  _would_  have children with me?"

Mal rolled his eyes. "If you had a hankering to have a whirl with me an' the genetic lottery," Mal said. "Chances are, they'd be pretty but empty-headed if my genes had any say."

"If my genes won out, they'd be smarter than you," Inara said. "Want to run that chance?"

"I'd risk it," Mal said, his voice quieter and more serious than it had any right to be, considering they were joking. 

 _Weren't they?_

Inara grinned and grabbed his hand, quickly pulling him away from the fence and towards the house. Mal assumed she was dragging him inside for a fake announcement that they were going to have hundreds of fat children together, and allowed her to go along, if only it meant her hands were there on his for a few seconds longer... But then she pushed him against the wall near the door, and her hands fell away.

"Wha-" Mal started.

"Thought I'd let the crew's imagination run wild," she said, an impish grin on her face. "If we disappear out of sight for a few minutes, and go back in looking all rumpled and such..."

"They'd think all manner of evil things," Mal said. He grinned. "It could be all kinds of funny."

"Especially if Nana lets slip we're sharing a room," Inara said. "They'll just think she's in on the joke."

"Good scheme," Mal said, nodding. "We'll have you an evil mastermind in no time."

Inara arched one eyebrow. "He says that like I'm not already," she said, with a small quirk of a grin on her face that belied her smooth, serious tone.

"I'm thinkin' you need a little work," Mal drawled, and turned to directly face her, moving in closer. Inara watched him with a semi-worried expression and he paused for a second, trying to draw out the source of her worry. "You said rumpled. We ain't rumpled."

"I was getting to it," Inara said, defensively. She reached one hand out. Mal ducked away.

" _You're_  gonna rumple  _me_?" Mal said in surprise.

"Has to look authentic," Inara said demurely, spoiling the effect by flashing a wicked grin afterwards. She followed that up by looping her hands up around his neck, and slowly sliding her hands into the back of his hair. She levelled him with a challenging look.

"You want me to... mess your hair?" Mal looked unsure.

"Won't work otherwise," Inara said. It could be Mal's imagination, but it sounded almost like a purr. Swallowing hard and thinking about Badger's very fine hat, Serenity's catalyser, Niska's pretty lamp, Jayne's morning breath, and all manner of disturbing things he could conjure up to dispel any unwanted... reactions... that might occur, he slid his hands up into her lovely, dark hair like he'd been wanting to since the very second he saw her.

"As soft as it looks." He was so distracted by the feeling, that he didn't realize it was his own voice until it was out. He looked directly at her, and she was staring at him, her hands moving through his hair. The word  _rumple_  implied fast, distracted, awkward movements in order to create chaos, but this wasn't what was happening at that moment, and Mal knew it. 

His hands were moving slowly, but so were hers. He pushed hair away from her forehead. Her hand drifted to his shoulder and pushed off one suspender. All the while, they looked directly at each other, until Mal was desperately wondering when this had stopped being a joke.

His hands moved automatically now, even though they were rumpled enough for the joke to pay off. He loosened the ties on her nightdress, untying the top ribbon entirely. She undid a button. He moved one hand to her waist, and Inara let out a small, muted sound that broke something, deep down inside of Mal. 

He exhaled hard, and in the same moment, moved his head closer to her, his mouth slightly open, his brain stuck between saying something idiotic to her, or maybe kissing her, and it must have been the second option that won out, because her mouth was moving closer too, and then they were kissing.

Afterwards, Mal would remember it all perfectly - every motion, every delightful movement of her lips beneath his. The way her mouth tasted of honey and ginseng, and the most tremendous scent of lavender that seemed to cling to every part of her.

Her fingers clutched at his shirt, her hands clenching then opening, like a cat settling a spot to sleep for the night. It would be much later that Mal remembered it was he who'd stepped back - giving Inara enough of an opening to push him against the wall - but in the heat of the moment he hadn't cared. Not even when a splinter poked into his back, not as long as she was kissing him.

Afterwards, he would recall how well their forms fitted together, almost like she had melted to fit against him.

All he could do in the moment was lose himself in Inara, in that perfect friction that made his whole body tingle in a rush of something almost painful, like someone had pumped lead into his chest. She moved against him just  _so_  and moaned into his mouth, and trembled against him, and it was only when she pulled her mouth away that he realized he had been trembling too. 

Mal breathed out shakily, shocked to discover his hands still on her waist, like he had been the one dragging her close to him.  _Maybe he had been._  "What was that?"

"It's called a kiss," Inara said, sounding almost amused - but even she looked shocked. "Not one like I've ever-" And now, it was her cheeks burned, but she tilted her chin slightly and did not look away from him.

"Suppose you wouldn't get paid much for two minutes," Mal teased, but he was shaken. No doubt about it. Inara Serra, emotional tornado supreme, had struck him again, and he was breathless in her wake.

She thumped him anyway for the reference, although there wasn't much malice in it. "At least now we look genuine... for the joke, I mean."

Mal bent down, and brushed his thumb along her bruised lower lip. "I'd say so at that," he said, his voice low and serious, as he willed her with his eyes to understand that he didn't think this was a joke at all.

"I'm going to have to be frank," Inara said quickly.

"Frank?" Mal said quickly, grinning, his voice a mite too soft to be completely joking. "And I was hankering after being the guy in this relationship-"

Inara thumped him again, this time with a little more force. "That's just it,  _relationship_ ," she said, her voice doubtful. "Don't get me wrong, this was just..." She blushed more furiously. "I don't know what it means, and I don't know if I want to know..." She looked troubled.

"Sshh," Mal said, gently grabbing her wrist to stop her babbling. He looked at her slender pale wrist in his large, calloused hand, and almost got distracted, so he looked at her, still holding her wrist, feeling her heightened pulse beneath the pad of his thumb, or maybe it was own scattered heartbeat. "You've got a big decision to make, 'bout what you want from your life, and I've no will to cloud it up for you. I ain't-" He inhaled raggedly, his shoulders shrugging awkwardly. "This is all just - part of the holiday, while you figure it out. I ain't gonna press you for anything you aren't comfortable with." He looked at her earnestly.

Inara nodded. "I - thanks." She smiled at him, although uncertainly.

"You still goin' to be comfortable with all of this?" Mal jerked his head at the house. "With the joke an' - an' the bed sharing?" He frowned at her.

Inara leaned into him, pushing her forehead against his, and he gathered her to him, burying his cheek in her messed up hair. He grinned unseen at his handiwork. "Yeah," she said, in an almost whisper. "Previous addendums apply, though, you ought to wash before bedtime."

Mal reluctantly pulled away and nodded at her. "Fine," he said, with a nod. He looked at the house. "Think we should make our grand entrance now?"

Inara narrowed her eyes and smiled. If it was a tad forced Mal didn't call her on it. "You're not concerned you might sully your manly reputation?"

"Nah," Mal said broadly. "I can't help it if speed impresses you."

Inara thumped him again, and the two turned inside to make their grand entrance. So, of course, with a grand entrance  _prepared_ , it just stood to good reason that no one was looking when they came through the door.

Mal didn't know whether to be offended (because the  _intention_  had been to  _fake_  making a scene, regardless of the reality it had turned into) or relieved (because Belle had seen him grow up and she  _really_  didn't have to know what he looked like after, well, you know.) He considered both options on taking in the scene. His crew were crowded around Belle, laughing and talking about something, and his stomach ached a little at seeing it, memories flooding his head. 

Belle had been one of his Mama's original forty hands. She'd had as much a hand in raising him as his Mama and Nana combined, with his Mama still working so hard and Nana off opening museums and inducting Companions even in her retirement years. Then the incident happened, and his Mama couldn't work anymore, so Nana came back to field the work so Mal could study, and then the war happened.

Most of his Mama's ranch hands signed up with Mal for the war, not all of them on the right side which had hurt Mal's heart at the time real bad, although he understood it now; folks were folks and had their reasons, and Shadow was half-Alliance, half-Independent, the oddest duck of the central planets until the terraforming. Belle and Dorf had stayed to look after the place, with Hornsy, Hornsy's wife Amity, Nana and his Mama. Mal had only been able to watch from afar as Nana had to hand over most of her life's savings, and the savings from the ranch, over to the Alliance to their survival. It hadn't hurt too much because it had been his idea. Nana was well known as a Companion Priestess by the Alliance; Mal had a record as an Independent soldier. In either outcome of the war, his home and his family was going to survive; how could he have felt pain at that knowledge?

He didn't feel pain, but he felt guilt. Although Nana kept saying what happened to his Mama wasn't his fault, Mal knew otherwise. As a student in his particular area of study, he could have avoided signing up for the war entirely, but it hadn't sat right with him. He'd prayed about it, and talked about it, and thought about it for weeks-

"Hey." Inara's voice was gentle and soft by his ear as she moved back to stand next to him, bumping his shoulder with hers. "You know, if I have to be the one to say you're thinking too much, then you know it's an issue."

"Just... being here again." Mal took a deep breath, as if he could inhale the sense of the place right into his lungs, and the breath was shuddery. "I forgot how guilty it made me feel. I should have come back before now."

That hadn't been quite what he meant to say, and he didn't quite realize how tense the thought made him until Inara's hand settled softly on his back, soothing him. He tried to relax his shoulders a little. "Sounds like they're just happy to see you," Inara said, and Mal looked across to her, meaning to say thank you, but he stalled. He wouldn't say he knew everything about Inara, but he'd spent a couple of years now cataloguing the rainbow of her moods and he had only seen glimpses of this expression. She seemed sad, regretful, almost mournful, the way she did sometimes when she was last to dinner in  _Serenity_. Like it was a scene she could only watch and not be part of.

Like maybe she grew up without a real family and that was why she worked so hard to gain comfort in other people's arms.

"Cap'n! You used to be  _so cute,_ " Kaylee squealed, spotting them and looking up from whatever Belle was showing them which, gorrammit, Mal hadn't seen those albums since he was thirteen years old and Nana had insisted on showing Mei-Lin all of the embarrassing pictures, thus ruining all chance Mal had with Mei-Lin for  _life_. "I can't believe you were going to be a  _teacher_. Oh my god, that's so cute, you running around after kids and teaching them their ABCs..."

Mal really tried not to flinch, because not even  _Zoe_  knew about the path his life was due to be on, before the Alliance meddled too much.

"Belle Masterson, I don't know. I let you live in my home, I give you the honoured task of raising me from a screaming infant, and this is how you repay me?" Mal stalked over to Belle with a fake scary look, which she saw right through.

"You as a screaming infant used to cover me in all manner of unsavoury liquids," Belle snorted, "you  _owe_  me, boy."

"I'm wounded." Mal clutched at his chest, swooning dramatically into a chair. "I may never breathe again. My own kin and kind, turning on me. Can you ever believe it?"

"Yes," his  _entire crew_  chimed in unison.

"You're all getting pay cuts!" Mal declared, loudly, to overcompensate for the chill running down his spine at his own words,  _may never breathe again_. He clenched his jaw a little to keep his  _I'm okay_  pretence up and tried to forget how the terror felt, clawing against the base of his skull, the consequences of the truth of it making him feel even more disconnected from this place that should be his home, and was still just a house.

"Out of the nothing we earned this week," Jayne said, launching into one of his favourite rants, "that would be nothing. Hmmm, whatever percent of nothing, carry the nothing-"

Even Simon was laughing at Jayne now, which was a thing of marvel which Mal would have duly marvelled at (his internal thesaurus was not amazing when he was being laughed at) had he not been a little peeved. "I hate you all. Loathing might be more on the mark, despise, detest, all them mean biblical hate words, I feel them towards you all." Mal pouted at them.

"I think he said that on the last heist, right near the beginning," Kaylee said, pursing her lips and tapping her fingers on her chin. "Yes, definitely."

"And the heist before that," Zoe butted in helpfully, her wisdom teeth showing, like a shark. Which meant that Mal's baby photos were going to become part of her mandatory  _let's tease Mal_  routine. Mal was starting to remember one of the fundamental reasons for not coming back home after the war, and wondered if he could burn that album. Except Nana would tan his hide, and even though he was a grown man... he was terrified. It was  _sane_  to be terrified of Nana in a bad mood.

"And the one before that," Simon added.

"Forty one times over the last three hundred and fourteen solar days," River said. She cocked her head to consider it. "Plus or minus an Earth-that-was hour or so, but including different iterations of the same sentiment."

"I  _mean_  it," Mal said, burying his head into his arms on the table. He felt a hand on his shoulder, tapping as if to console him.

"There, there," Inara said, and Mal knew then that this situation was beyond redemption if Inara was joining in on the teasing, "we  _believe_  that you hate us all."

"I do," Mal said, " _completely_."

"I mean, disregarding the fact that saying it so many times negates its impact, thus rendering the words effectively meaningless," Inara added.

Mal muttered something which might have been  _I'll render you all effectively meaningless_ , or _I'm surrendering my man-card immediately_ ; even he wasn't entirely sure, and he was the one muttering it.

"I'm going to go the effective route of a coward," Mal said, "and change the subject. Belle, Nana said there were some clothes my crew could use while the path to Serenity's broken?"

"In the old Feed room," Belle said, jerking her head in the direction of the main kitchen. "Help yourselves to anything. There's washing facilities round back if you're desperate for anything that's too musty. We had preservatives in the wash when we cleaned 'em first time, but some of the stuff's decades old."

"All right, gang; you can laugh at me in there just as easily as out here," Mal said. "Let's move it."

~~~~

"Now  _this_ is more what I expected from a core planet."

Mal looked up from the trunk he had perched himself on to enjoy watching Kaylee and River run around the place trying on all the pretty dresses, not that he would ever admit that was why he picked there to sit, because it would sound a little pervy and he finds it hard to explain that he just likes seeing his crew happy.

Zoe was leaning against a wall, looking out over the place. Once it had been a half-sized warehouse full of things to run the ranch. Now it had been transformed into a storage room for all the old belongings of the people who used to live here. Nana had called it the wardrobe, like it had been this way for a while. Mal tried not to feel queasy at where most of the old hands that raised him were, and remembered what it had been like growing up; things  _had_  to be re-used, and shared, there had been so many bodies around the place it was impossible otherwise. 

His first mate looked distant, like she was imagining something else in place of the racks of clothes.

"Mama used to have over forty hands here at a time, plus the old Companion stuff..." Mal shuffled across the dusty trunk, making space for Zoe; of course she just eyeballed him oddly and yanked out another trunk from against the wall so she could sit closer to him but still face him. "I don't have cooties," Mal exclaimed.

Zoe sat down, looking at him levelly. Normally she would have smiled, but she looked at him flat on, with her chin tilted up a little, almost mulishly, and Mal had to fight the flinch, because that was her soldier expression. No emotion, just face forward and ready to go on a collision course. "I don't think there's space enough on that trunk you're sat on for three," Zoe said.

"I ain't inviting anyone else into the conversation-" Mal started, and Zoe was still staring like he was a gorram idiot, and what else was new, except he was missing something; Wash was dead, had been for four months now, and the months weren't getting easier with it, but surely Zoe didn't mean Wash's  _ghost_...

Zoe's eyebrows raised slowly, and Mal got it, with the aid of River's voice in his head, what she had said when he asked how many cry babies they had on board.  _More than you think_ , she had said. For the millionth time, Mal didn't know whether to curse the freaky Alliance doctors or be morbidly impressed at what they  _had_  accomplished with their evil and wicked ways. "You're _pregnant?_ "

Zoe shushed him. "Yes." She sounded completely, ridiculously pleased, like she was giddy with it, but also amazingly nervous, and he didn't blame her - this was a chance-in-a-million-billion pregnancy, and her whole future rode on it being a success. Mal felt suddenly queasy at the responsibility his own self.

There was a weird noise coming out of his own mouth, and Mal fought to stop it because the others might thing he was trying to strangle a cat or something, and this conversation needed no intervention. "I-" He did the maths, and he had been with Zoe pretty much the whole time, so asking if it was Wash's baby wasn't even necessary. "Congratulations. Zoe, this is- I'm so pissed at him."

Zoe blinked and stared at him, like he was at the end of her gun. "What?"

"He gets you knocked up and then runs off and gets himself stabbed," Mal said, "by  _listening to me_. I knew Wash was an idiot, but that was colossal stupidity. Baby Washburne, you better take after your mommy's brain, and that's an order from your cap'n."

"Sir, you realize my womb is more below where you're speaking," Zoe pointed out. "You're sort of crooning to my stomach right now."

"Semantics," Mal said, waving his arm, and then the emotion of it hit him. He felt shaky, like he couldn't breathe, like he'd never breathe again, and that was too close to home and that was _burning_ , and then it was like he was suddenly on sea, and he needed to sit down. Except he  _was_ sat down. "Zoe," he said again, instead of anything else, holding her expression as best as he could.

"Yeah," Zoe said, this  _brilliant_  smile coming through on her face even though her eyes were getting suspiciously watery, a fact Mal steadfastly did not mention as he suspected it might make him mimic her expression, and the smile his manliness might be able to cope with, the tears... not so much. "Yeah," she repeated, just as coherent as Mal. 

"So... what are you going to do? I mean, you know I'd want you on Serenity-" Mal  _really_ wanted Zoe on Serenity, and the idea of the pitter-patter of actual tiny feet on his lovely boat was making him mimic Zoe's smile automatically, but he knew he couldn't order her. Because if she had her heart set on going home, or to what was left of Zoe's home planet anyway, Mal would have to let her go. He would never risk losing her completely. 

"That's why I needed to talk with you," Zoe said. "You're the first person on the crew I've told. But last night..."

"Nana got it out of you," Mal realized. "She's a bullhorn when it comes to wrangling the truth outta folks."

"Coulda warned me when we set down."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"The Alliance are being all poke-y here on Shadow," Zoe said. "Your Nana could do with another pair of hands for the moment while they find someone to replace the work Dorf was doing. And Wash... didn't want me having a baby while out in the black. It was the mostly the thing that stopped us having children. And without him here-"

Mal's throat was dry, but he forced himself to nod. "You're staying here," he said, although it felt like someone else was saying the words, and he was far away, watching himself and Zoe sat on opposite trunks, both nervous and tense as anything. "I'm- I'm glad."

"Sir?"

"If I can't look after you, my Nana can." Mal shrugged. "It's like having me around, but a less annoying version."

"You said it before I did," Zoe said promptly. "It would just be til the baby's old enough not to fall down one of Serenity's steam vents. Then I'll be back. If-"

"No ifs," Mal exclaimed, "no ifs  _ever_. Not with you. You'll always be Serenity's first mate, _always_. Ain't a thing in the 'verse can change that."

"I've followed you since the war ended," Zoe said, "and even here, I still am. Just walking your footsteps from a long time ago."

Mal nodded, and couldn't think what to say. Except, that wasn't quite the truth. He didn't know what to say that wouldn't make him break out in tears, and Zoe deserved more than that. He was happy for her; ridiculous, bubbling up through his lungs happy. It was just the selfish sour note in his own belly of his own creation that he wouldn't get to see Zoe swell with Wash's child, that he wouldn't be able to see her glow every day, that he might not get to meet this last jigsaw piece of Wash's life from day one.

Still, he could make her promise to keep him up to date, and he could make sure they were back in time for it. Zoe wanted this, and that was what made it more important than anything, especially his own selfishness.

"You should have told us about still having family left," Zoe said, her voice low. "We would have come more. Family's important."

"My crew is my family," Mal said, his voice just as low. "'sides, when we finally learnt the lesson how important family is-" His face cracked into a smile despite the bittersweet sadness they were both feeling. "I didn't want no Haven happening to anyone else."

"Inara was right on board," Zoe said. "We could have hidden at the training house."

"And put more lives at risk," Mal said. "No way."

"Even though they ain't related to you, you'd put them before your..." Zoe paused, seeming to have trouble with the word, "Nana?"

"She'd stop threatening with tanning my hide and get on with it if I'd tried otherwise." Mal smiled humourlessly, then he felt suddenly awkward. "We've been through so much, Zoe, and you know all of me that counts, and then it was too late to talk of has-beens and might-beens-"

"I know," Zoe said, her voice soft. "And I should have given you more opening to talk."

"After the last couple months," Mal said, his voice low and he found himself completely unable to hold her gaze, "I think that should be my line."

She smiled at him, and this time he thought it was genuine. "After the war, I didn't reckon on going anywhere else but where you were. Never had no need to think on it. 'verse don't make sense any other way," Zoe said.

Mal frowned at her, confused.

"I love you," Zoe said simply. "Not like Wash, not ever like him, because he gorram stole my heart right when I wasn't 'xpecting it, but... it's love, of a sort. And love means never havin' to say you're sorry. Wash taught me that. So if you're going to attempt even one more time to say you're sorry for what happened, I am going to kick your butt and serve it up to you on a plate. Because I'm not sorry. Followin' you brought me to Wash, and even if I'd only had him for one day, I still wouldn't be sorry for the experience."

Mal found himself almost apologising, but Zoe's hand went determinedly for her gun. He stopped himself, and then said, seriously, quickly, "I know I ain't ever- I mean - Same here." He willed her to understand what he meant even though he was having trouble with the words. "Even though I don't often show it. You're there for me all the time, and I don't deserve it."

"No, you don't," Zoe said, with a grin. They were silent for a second, and then Mal moved in and gave her a quick hug, which she silently returned. They stepped apart, and Zoe nodded, and moved to walk away.

"Zoe, wait-" Mal blurted, and felt the urge to blush, but chased it away. He looked down at his fingers, and interlocked them, before looking back into her curious face. "I oughtta- I mean, seein' as I'm being truthsome an' all-"

Zoe still looked confused. Mal looked at her, anguish and indecision on his face, but Zoe's expression didn't change - she wasn't going to help him. 

"Sit down?" Mal said, lowering himself back onto the trunk.

Zoe did, slowly, still curious. "Cap'n?"

"I, uh-" He had to tell her. He  _had_ to. It wasn't hard.  _I'm sick._  Two words.  _One day, maybe one day soon, I won't be able to fly any more. I'll have to be either stuck in the air or stuck planetside or the change in pressure will kill me_. More than two words. Too many words, too raw, too bright. But now Zoe was expecting a secret, and there was another one that was just as concerning to Mal right now. His face felt heated as he tried to think how to phrase it, figured blurting  _Thing got worse! Thing got worse!_  might get him committed to the loony bin, and ended up deciding to quickly blurt the truth before he lost his cool altogether, "I kissed Inara."

Zoe's curiosity slid from her face to be replaced by mild confusion. "You mean this joke thing-"

"No, I mean, I really kissed her," Mal said, blurting it out as quickly as he could.

Zoe laughed. 

Mal frowned at her, hurt. "Now, if you're just gonna be down with the shits and giggles after I've poured out my innnermosts-"

"No, it's just-" Zoe tried to make her face serious. She was failing, but at least Mal could see she was trying. "Really?"

Mal nodded, almost miserably. "An' it gets worse."

"She slapped you?" Zoe guessed.

Mal shook his head.

"Kissed you back?"

"No. I mean, yes, she did. But that's not the bad thing."

Zoe frowned. "If she said she doesn't love you, she's lyin', we've all seen it-"

"That ain't it," Mal said, "although, intriguing sentiment, we can come back to that later... No, the worst thing is..."

"You paid for it?" Zoe suggested.

"I ain't that stupid," Mal exclaimed. "No, I, uh. Schoolboy. Acted like a schoolboy."

"You often do," Zoe said, dubiously.

"Actually, I  _came_  like a schoolboy. Right in my pants," Mal said, the words rushed together, but clear enough for Zoe.

Zoe's eyes widened almost comically, and then she grinned toothily. "I always thought she had to be good to risk her career by travelling with us," she said, looking suspiciously like a tiger. Mal began to wonder if he should regret telling her. He knew he had to tell someone, because lying to himself sure hadn't worked out that well so far in his life, and Zoe had seemed in that second of honesty about their own relationship in life to be a good choice, but now Mal was wondering if it was this brand of thinking that made his plans not go smooth. "So what did she say?"

"She don't want to think on it," Mal said, "until she knows what else she wants from life."

"So you just let her go, didn't you?" Zoe said.

"Had to let her think about it," Mal said, defensively. "May reavers strike me down, though it's tough to admit so, I want to sway her decision. But I can't." He exhaled long and hard, and looked at her. "What do I do?"

Zoe had never seen him look so vulnerable, and she had thought she had seen his entire rainbow of emotions. The answer was simple, not that she was going to tell Mal that. "Tell her," Zoe said.

Mal frowned. "I-"

"She's deciding what she wants to do with her life," Zoe said. "Ain't fair to ask someone to make a decision that big without knowing all the facts."

Mal nodded heavily, and then looked at her. "And what am I telling her?"

Zoe narrowed her eyes. "You know very well, sir."

Mal pulled a face. "I knew you was gonna say that."

Zoe's eyebrows furrowed. "Please tell me River's psychicness isn't contagious," she said. "If Jayne starts to be able to read my thoughts and finds out what I really think of him, he may just chuck himself off the roof of this fine house."

Mal just grinned. "My daddy built it," he said. "It's the gorram house that Jack built."

"Your daddy was Jack Reynolds?" Zoe said. "Good name."

"Strong name. Strong man," Mal said, lowering his head. "You would'a liked him. Probably better'n you like me."

"I'm findin' that real difficult to puzzle on how that would be difficult," Zoe responded quickly, an innocent look on her face.

"You may be pregnant but I can  _still tan your hide_ ," Mal said, getting to his feet.

"You'd have to catch me first, sir, and risk me getting that particular punishment in first," Zoe said.

"On second thoughts," Mal said, "let's not."

"I thought you might see it that way."

~~~~

Although there had been a variety of racks of old Companion clothing, beautiful silk kimonos and a gorgeous array of dresses and skirts that Kaylee had nearly swooned over, Inara had gravitated over to the more practical side. She was on  _vacation_. It meant she could be whoever she wanted to be.

Vacation Inara wasn't a Companion. She didn't want clients on Shadow. That meant working, not a vacation, and Mal had said this was a vacation and Inara was going to hold onto that for as long as she could. So vacation Inara was going to embrace Shadow, embrace the place this  _used_ to be, and even before the Alliance this place was a ranch and the wardrobe rungs of abandoned clothes reflected that, with a bevy of practical clothing. 

There was so much. Inara's heart hurt a little for the number of people who had been here, had helped  _raise_ Mal from the little he had said on the subject, for the number of them who were dead and gone... Still, she was vacation Inara, and vacation Inara wasn't aesthetically oriented or bothered with pretty fripperies or her appearance. Vacation Inara was a ranch girl, and so practical dress it was.

There was a pole with black lines on that Inara took a moment to glance at, before realizing one of them had a curl of golden hair caught around it. They were black elastic hair ties. Inara pulled one off, checked it for loose hairs, and quickly tied her hair back in a loose ponytail. She hadn't worn her hair like that in  _years_ , not since becoming a Companion; ponytails were for girls, who weren't sophisticated yet enough to become a lady. Already she felt like someone new, someone different. It was a liberating rush, that for this vacation she  _could_  be someone else. Someone else who didn't have a weighty choice about their future to make.

She found a rack full of clothes her size near the end of the room, and she chose without whimsy, looking for the garments which had taken wear but little tear. She found a pair of dark brown canvas pants which had lost some colour at the knees, and she tried not to blush as she remembered Nana's wicked innuendo of the night before, as if Inara would be going down on her knees with Mal-

There was half a broken mirror on the wall of the room, rusted and spotted, and Inara caught a flash of her reflection, her cheeks a bright slash of crimson that normally she had to spend ten minutes with her rouge brushes creating. With her hair pulled away from her face and the dull lighting of the room, she didn't look like herself. She saw the frown in her reflection before feeling the pull of it on her face, and she shook the tight odd feeling away, because wasn't that the  _goal_  of all of this?

Inara pulled the pants from their hanger, and found a blue plaid shirt like she remember farmers wearing on the vids she used to watch with the other girls in her dorm, as they waited nervously for the morning, for whichever tutor would be training them come sunrise, and hoping it wasn't the day for their maidenheads to be ceremoniously taken by an approved Companion-registered associate. Her Taking Day had been remarkably pleasant. Inara enjoyed sex. Her training groomed her to understand people, know what her own body was capable of, and the associate who took her that final step was kind, put some sort of alcohol in the ceremonial tea that made everything warm and fuzzy at the edges, and as her graduation class looked on, Inara had been the one to initiate the contact to bring her out from training and into full Companion status. It hadn't been the big deal that they'd all whispered about at night, psyching each other out, worrying and thrilling at the concept in equal measure. She had been lucky with her assignment - he had been kind, and smelled nice, and was pleasing enough to look at that arousal had been easy to find. Her dorm sister Arielle had been less lucky with the random draw; her associate had been so lucklessly endowed that Arielle's maidenhead had to be taken care of later by the House medic and she had been unkind with it - Arielle hadn't been able to work for a good three weeks, which was the most profitable window for a new Companion.

Something about this place was making Inara remember, the touch of dusty memories making her movements slow and lingering, and she wondered if this was how Mal felt, and wondered if it was a thousand times worse. For Inara she was making vague associations, based on shallow triggers and the constant dull worries of the girls back at the Training House, the ones who hadn't the proper training until she got there, and even now were struggling. Some of the older girls were due their Taking Days soon, and Inara hurt a little at the idea of them struggling through it without her there to calm them, to soothe them with her words of experience.

For Mal, each and every footstep must have a memory attached, and he hadn't been here for _years_ , and people didn't refuse to go home for no good reason. Inara knew that all too well. She looked over to see where Mal was, and saw him deep in conversation with Zoe. She wondered if Zoe was telling him the truth about her pregnancy. Inara's quick eyes had seen it the moment she came back on board; she shared a cycle with Zoe, and although her period came regular as clockwise the day before the funeral, Zoe had stayed slender and sombre throughout. It was true stress did strange things to the body, but Inara had thorough training of the male and female forms, and Zoe's body had been slowly showing signs of pregnancy. She hadn't told anyone she knew, not even Zoe; it wasn't her secret to tell. It shouldn't even be her secret to know. She had  _left_  Serenity for a reason, and this was part of the reason, where she couldn't help but look for Mal wherever she was.

She even looked for him in the Training House, tilting her head, scouring the landscape with focussed intent, before she remembered she had gone, and remembered it had been her choice.

There was a box of undergarments that smelled like lavender and looked bright white; Inara recognised the House Madrassa seal and sighed with relief, because Companion habits died hard - when Inara visited Arielle a year past, even though Arielle had quit her way of life nearly four years ago (the traumatic Taking Day had obviously not helped her friend settle into the stressful lifestyle of a Companion) she still did everything the way they were taught to - and the box of undergarments was proof Companion training when done right was something that _never_  went away; ergo the underwear had probably been boiled and bleached twice each. She found some underpants, but the brassieres were clearly not her size, so she made do with some white strips of material in the side of the box that might have been for the purpose. She bundled them into the shirt, because Jayne was nearby and eyeing up the box of underwear, and hurried off to change.

She found herself again in the bathroom she had been in last night, out of some curious headstrong desire to see if she really  _was_ that much of a coward. It had a rudimentary shower which didn't heat up all that much but used  _actual water_ , and not that bitter recycled water that Serenity used, and Inara wondered briefly about staying there all day, except she didn't yet know how the ranch's water system worked, and staying in for longer than a minute might really upset things.

It was a miraculous minute, though. Inara could almost picture herself staying here... although that wasn't even one of her terrible choices to make. There it was again, the reality of the situation looming over her, and Inara got dressed as quickly as possible, wrapping the bandage fabric around her chest to give her as much support as necessary, and slipping the shirt on over the top.

It was a man's shirt. Inara hadn't noticed until her fingers went to fasten it only to find the buttons on the wrong side. She hurriedly did them up regardless - vacation Inara had already worn Mal's dressing gown. The shirt was baggy, but not too baggy - maybe it had even been Mal's from back when, and Inara really had to work hide to fight that blush because it was ridiculous, she hadn't blushed this much since puberty and the crush on her old harpsichord teacher had been the focus of her whole summer until she got too good and they moved her onto another instrument. She had to stop thinking about her past.

But really, wasn't that what this vacation was about? Inara sank back against the sink, keeping her back to the mirror in there so she didn't have to look at herself, so she didn't have to  _like_ this vacation Inara, who was going to get to do all the things  _real_  Inara wanted to try. This vacation was for her to sort out her thoughts, decide on her future, and her past was an intrinsically linked part of the whole decision. The way she reacted around Mal... 

She touched a finger to her lower lip, remembering the kiss, and the way he swelled against her, the way her own body reacted, opening up around him despite the layers, and her thighs had clenched around his, and it had been such a long time since she had orgasmed without intimate touch. It had been back in training, actually, when they spent hours practicing old Tantric rites, and it had been  _days_  of it; lying on her back in a dark hall, watching dust motes spill through light beams, concentrating on her breathing and on the pleasure of it all. It was frustrating, irritating, heady; not a single one of them didn't end up curled under their covers that night, rubbing between their legs with their hands and muffling desperate sounds, and all of them laughing about it afterwards, high and happy and even the mistresses in the morning smiled at them like they all  _knew_  what had gone on. 

Despite the number of times Inara felt she had to justify her work, explain how it wasn't  _all_ about the sex, it was still a part of it she thoroughly enjoyed. Giving up that life fully would be a blow.  _Although you wouldn't have to give up the sex part if you left it to be with Mal,_  a wicked little voice inside her head noted, and that was a large part of the problem. Inara was trained well enough to know that she could take Mal and run away with him, throw a blanket over their heads and disappear forever, and it would be a good life, it would. They'd fight, a whole bunch of fighting, and Inara would be able to carve herself a part of Serenity that was all her own - goodness knew Mal couldn't keep his finances straight at best of times, and she was a canny shot and an amazing cook, and she knew with Kaylee's help they could set up a hydroponics area down in the belly of Serenity, grow some real food that would net them a steady profit so they'd never run out of gas...

On the other hand, that choice meant trapping herself  _to_  Mal, or worse, trapping herself in those layers of  _tension_ , that vague dull  _hurt_  when they fought with each other, and one day he'd tire of waiting for her, and Nandi would happen all over again and her heart might not heal next time. So if she chose to stay she would have to choose being with him, there wasn't any way for her heart to survive otherwise being so close to him. And being  _away_  from him, forever, would her heart survive that?

Inara tucked the shirt into the pants, resolved to slip back down to the wardrobe and maybe find a belt to keep it up, and couldn't bring herself to move. Because although she didn't like it, she did have to choose, and she did have to look at why it was so  _difficult_  to choose. That morning had been such a gorgeous taster of what life with Mal could be like. She felt a pulse of _want_  tremble through her, and tried to clear her thoughts from the curve of his arms and the trail of hair on his stomach she just wanted to... to rest her head against, or  _bite_ , or follow further down, or- 

No, no, no, she was  _not_  going to let this decision be ruled by lust. She and Mal had a basic chemistry, she'd known that from their first biting fight, walking away with head held high to mask how uncomfortably damp her panties felt the whole time. Was that the problem? That a life with Mal meant the whole foreplay she would ever get was bickering over things, flinging hurtful statements at each other, except with the knowledge they could keep getting angrier until they could rut against each other, mindlessly fuck the anger out of their bodies until all that was left was their clammy, breathless bodies, nothing between them but sheets and sweats, all real emotion spent on fake, angry passion. Relationships didn't,  _couldn't_  work like that.

She couldn't eliminate sex out of the equation entirely, but by the same reckoning she couldn't survive on nothing but angry sex. But if she let Mal get out those words, the words that both of them had nearly said in frantic, desperate moments, the words that would change everything... There wouldn't be anger. There would just be her, saying the words back, and in that moment meaning them, and he would kiss her, on the mouth,  _possessing_  her, and Inara wouldn't care about being angry at him thinking he could possess her because she's not an object, she really isn't, but she wouldn't be able to think about that. She would just want to take from Mal, and take, and take, and throw out all her training and just  _feel_. There would be times they would get angry, and times when they would compromise, and times they spent apart, sulking and stubborn and ranting and crazy. But those times would be brief, and Mal would speak his apologies against her skin, and she would forgive him anything. They'd sail around the 'verse, fighting or working for crime depending on which paid the best, and they'd save enough to retire on a border planet and grow  _fat_  and do nothing but watch the sun rise and see their children and laugh, and reminisce. Or Mal would do something crazy and get himself shot, and Inara would- Well, she wouldn't be far behind, she couldn't live without him, and-

And there it was. 

Everything she'd been looking for and it had been in her gorram stupid head the whole time. 

She couldn't live in a 'verse without Mal in it. It didn't matter what distance it was, where she was, if Mal wasn't in there somewhere, it didn't matter a gorram  _thing_.

Inara laughed out loud with it, and covered her mouth with both hands as it bubbled out of her, because there it was, plain in her mind, and it all seemed so  _easy_. Maybe it had been the Companion Training, drilled into her head,  _fall in love and you walk directly into the path of a bullet_  - they were told it week in and week out, but no one ever said anything about  _why_  you would walk into that path, and plenty of Trainee Companions did it anyway, and Inara hadn't known and now she did. Because sometimes there was something you couldn't live without that Companion life would take away from you.

And right then and there, Inara stopped being a Companion.

She thought it should hurt. It must do. Someone over in Sihnon must get some immediate computer alert  _warning, warning, we just lost another one_ , but no one came to find her and nothing in the whole world changed. The biggest, most momentous decision of her whole damn life and she was on her own, wearing man's clothes, in a bathroom on a core planet with a bunch of fugitives and scoundrels and thieves.

She'd been so  _scared,_ and nervous, and when she was training the girls at the Training House... she had felt like a caged animal, pacing up and behind bars, behaving exactly as she ought to, but feeling  _less_  of herself, and now she knew why. 

Inara was  _free_. Free to be herself, not  _Companion_ Inara or  _Vacation_  Inara, but just... Inara. She was free to choose, to choose who she wanted to be, and that's why she was deciding not to be a Companion anymore - for herself. For her  _own_  sanity, her own freedom. She wasn't _chaining_  herself to Mal - she was freeing the shackles of her past so she could walk a path beside him, and it could be whatever path she  _wanted_.

One thing was for certain - she had spent way too long thinking. Inara felt like she had wasted her whole  _life_  thinking, and she had definitely spent too long this morning on thoughts. She felt dizzy, completely off-centre, but she wasn't scared. She didn't have two dire choices - she had a thousand choices, a million.

But one of them kept rearing its head.  _Mal. I need Mal._

Inara fairly flew out of the bathroom, heading for the stairs, rushing down them almost gleefully. She felt genuinely  _giddy_  with it. She pushed through into the wardrobe, but no one was there, so she grabbed the nearest belt and looped it through the pants as she headed for the back door. Everyone had to be outside, surely, but she could take Mal to one side, right? She could do it, subtle and quiet, and find out if maybe, possibly, somehow there was a corner of Serenity for her to stay, work her keep, and there would be time, so much time, for her to pose the question on a more personal level - to ask Mal if there was maybe a corner of his heart she could stay, a little corner of his life to hold onto.

Of course,  _time,_ in the end, was exactly what she didn't have.

~~~~

She has every inclination of pulling Mal to one side, she did. But when Inara got outside, and found the whole crew working in the field, she thought it was churlish not to join in. So she dove right in, scowled outrageously when they all mocked her items of clothing, and ignored the flourish of almost  _heartburn_  when Mal gave her this soft, almost fond look before joining in with the mockery.

She really,  _really_  meant to do it when Nana came back with Hornsy and Kris in tow and a whole bunch of supplies for the next couple of weeks. There were a whole handful of opportunities to pull Mal to one side, to tell him the truth, and hash it out however it was going to happen. And for some reason, as each opportunity danced and flitted away, her chest got tighter, and tighter, like some  _feeling_  was telling her that this was her last chance. 

Inara lost four opportunities merely because she couldn't find the words. She was scared, but not of his reaction - now she was just scared the wrong words would come from her mouth. She was in the habit of insulting him, and had several times out in the sun as they dug and softened the soil in one of the lower fields, and each time the words left her mouth she worried and worried that maybe she had pushed her luck too far. Maybe one of the insults would hit the wrong place, and take any chance away. But Mal bickered back at her automatically, slow and without heat, and instead of that horrible  _pressure_ between them, where one of them had to walk away before they exploded, there was... silence. Just a moment. But it was a reassuring moment, and a jut to Mal's jaw that told her, somehow plainly, that he was working as hard as she was not to give in to that urge to hurt, and push away, and fight - because it was easier. Because opening your eyes to the blunt truth was like forcing yourself to the edge of a giant chasm of vasty nothingness.

And taking one of the opportunities to pull Mal to one side, that was like voluntarily stepping out into a black that had less mercy than the black of space.

People usually attributed all this  _feelings_  malarkey to  _falling_ , but Inara hadn't fallen in love with Mal. Far from it. She had yelled, screamed, resisted, flailed and fought the whole way, and now she was just...  _giving in_.

Giving  _in_  to love.

And realizing that wasn't the scary part of it at all.

Mal wasn't the scary part of it either. No, the scary part was the idea of screwing it up, and it being  _her_  fault, and resenting herself for being foolish enough to try... but a scarier part was the part that would resent her  _more_  for not trying. 

So she tried.

Grabbing him by the breeches to turn him around after he finished stacking chicken feed in one of the outlying huts wasn't exactly the smartest move. Inara had spent a lot of time quietly watching Mal, trying to unravel his myriad mysteries, and she thought she knew most of his shades of personality. 

Carefree!Mal, when they were on Serenity and all breathing and trouble was on the horizon but they were a heady number of steps away. 

Stoic!Mal when things were really in the shit. 

Stupid!Mal when he knew what was going on but liked to be the brunt of every joke because it meant his crew was alive and sharp and  _there_. 

Vulnerable!Mal, usually by accident, when things got too hectic, too traumatic, and fear and adrenaline made him reveal too much of himself, and in turn revealing too much of  _her_. 

Defensive!Mal, which was what Vulnerable!Mal eventually turned into, and Mal form of defense was a solid offense, and usually that meant offending  _her_. And usually that was because she'd attacked him, feeling too raw at how vulnerable he made her feel, so they fought and bit and scratched and it was fear, it was  _all_  fear.

Soldier!Mal. Which was what he was now, as his hands went instantly to his gun, and fear was painted across his face for just a second, and there was nothing but fear in his steady gaze.

His whole body relaxed as he realized who it was that had hold of him literally by the breeches.

"'Nara," he said, in a breath of surprise. "What the  _sphincter in hell_ , I could have taken your head off!"

"You could have  _tried_ ," Inara said, automatically, then recognised the edge in her tone and swallowed, readjusting her fire. "You're not as terrifying as you think you are," she finished, in place of the impulse to call him an imbecile that was sadly going to take a while to wash out from her.

She enjoyed how his eyebrows raised a little, the surprise on his face. He could surprise her every day, but she could still surprise him too, and she wanted that. She wanted to find new ways of surprising him, every day. And she knew now for certain - whether that meant at his side as a lover, or from a distance as a crewmember, her path had been clear ever since stepping foot on Serenity. She thought she had been running away from her past, and instead she had been running to him. Always to him.

"I'm plenty terrifying," Mal said. "Little girls scream and run from me in the street, I'll have you know."

"That's because you have a hazy relationship with hygiene. They're running for their lives." Okay, so it really was going to take Inara a while to curb the bickering, but from the semi-smile curving Mal's mouth, maybe she wasn't going to have to curb  _all_  of it, and that was a thrilling thought.

"Hygiene has got me  _shot_ , at least twice." Mal squinted. "It's on the same level with wanting me dead as Patience."

"Less difficult to shoot."

"Sadly that's the truth." Mal looked down at her, his expression blank. Inara wondered which Mal this was, and thought it might be Unsure!Mal, who second guessed everything. Or maybe it was Hopeful!Mal, who hadn't let Mal show his real emotions since Serenity Valley stole them away. "So what do I owe the honour of this attempted kidnap?"

Inara realized she was still holding his breeches and she pulled her hands away, making a show of cleaning her hands against her trousers. She looked at him. "I..."

She hadn't rehearsed what to say. Rehearsing was part of her Companion ritual, and she wanted to reject that, but it had been her crutch for more years than she could count. She wanted to speak from her heart, but the words didn't come. Her mouth and brain were betraying her. She looked at Mal uselessly, and shrugged, and his face relaxed. His mouth was pulled down at the edges, like he was displeased, but he had that soft, fond look in his eyes that made Inara hopeful that it  _was_  Hopeful!Mal in front of her.

"Do you-" Mal said. He looked down, like there was something interesting on the hut floor, but Inara had stared at it plenty before making her move and there was nothing but floorboard and straw. Mal was clearly struggling with what he was about to say, and Inara's stomach twinged with the faint fear that she was about to meet Regretful!Mal, or Rejection!Mal. 

Or I'm-Sorry-But-I-Just-Don't-Like-You-That-Way!Mal.

"Do you want to meet my mother?" Mal blurted.

That was the last thing Inara imagined him saying. " _What_?"

~~~~

Mal didn't know why he said it. He only knew for some reason Inara wasn't herself. She hadn't looked like herself since stepping out of the house in ranch worthy clothing. In  _his_  old ranch clothing, not that he told her. He got a bit shivery seeing her in them and didn't trust himself not to get  _clingy_  and possessive if he told her, because he knew he couldn't hide how much he liked seeing her in his clothes.

Scratch that, because it wasn't  _really_  the truth. When Inara had been on Serenity, Mal had observed her so much he could have probably listed  _Inara watching_  amongst his top hobbies. He thought it wouldn't be so bad now she was back, but he still found himself looking for her wherever they were, gauging her reaction to things and adjusting his behaviour accordingly. 

His many logged hours of surreptitious Inara-watching made him realize something - Inara had never looked  _more_  like herself. He had seen glimpses of that Inara, usually in the middle of one of their rousing arguments, when she was so busy attacking him that she forgot to defend herself, leaving herself open and raw and vulnerable until the inevitable moment that one of them took the fight too far, jabbing deliberately in one of the many soft places they both knew the locations of. 

She had somehow taken his words of  _vacation_  to heart, and had finally allowed herself to  _be_ herself, free of the airs and graces that came alongside her constant self-protection. 

So Mal hadn't been able to help it. After an afternoon of ribbing that didn't descend into inevitable damage, after an afternoon of the possibility of  _them_ not feeling like it would inevitably come with a life full of  _hurt_ , he hadn't been able to help it at  _all_. 

After turning on her, the firm hand on his chest making him flash back involuntarily, his hand grazing for a gun that wasn't there, she had looked so small and terrified and vulnerable, he spoke the words before thinking them through.

"Do you want to meet my mother?"

Mal thought his heart had stopped the moment he spoke the words, that he was going to have to _admit_  to the Sickness, but Inara said "What?" in this completely bewildered, adorable voice and Mal knew he was lost.

There wasn't going to be anything in the 'verse he wanted more than her.

But he was broken, and didn't have anything to offer her, but that was what he was going to do - show her everything. Let her see why he was who he was. And if she ran, better she ran now rather than let him keep thinking, and thinking,  _maybe, somehow, maybe_.

"My Mama," Mal explained, and he can't meet her eyes, because this is the last piece of him. There won't be a puzzle to who he is any more. Shepherd Book had mentioned to him once about how Mal was a mystery, about how  _some_  people were drawn to him because of that, and Mal needed to know. He needed to know if Inara being connected to him, if  _Thing_  existed because he was a mystery or because of something  _more_.

Her meeting his Mama would sort that out once and for all.

Mal didn't realize how much he was trembling until he felt Inara's fingers on his cheek. He looked at her and smiled his best defensive smile, and she shook her head, like she could already see right through him and that gave him the strength to continue. 

"This way," he said, jerking his head at the hut door. He led, and she followed.

It wasn't much, but for one moment, he could dream it was enough.

~~~~

Mal was silent as he led Inara to the second floor of the house, and Inara grew more unsure with each step. She wanted to tell him that it wasn't necessary, if this wasn't going to be  _okay_ then he didn't have to do it, but she couldn't find the words.

He stopped a few paces away from a white door that Inara remembered scurrying past, and she felt ashamed. The scary noise must have been his mother. Mal was frozen still, but he didn't turn to look at her at first. She could only see the corner of his chin, the line of his back, but each of them was as tense as she had ever seen him.

"I-" He coughed, and his back tensed even  _more_ , and Inara couldn't help herself. She put her hand on his shoulder, trailing the curve with the pad of her thumb, and he relaxed a little. Enough for the tension in his jaw to lessen so he could speak. "My mama was a Companion too," Mal said, without looking at her. "When the Alliance terraformed the other continents to make this a Core planet, she was outside. She doesn't know about her face. Please, please-"

Inara swallowed, feeling the tension ripple through his body tangibly under her fingertips. There was so much grief and regret in his tone that she hated the sound of it, that she couldn't do anything but say, "Yes, of course, I won't, I  _couldn't_ ," which wasn't a full sentence but it was enough for Mal. He turned his face slightly, his face coloured with shadow, and he nodded, his eyes hooded and guarded.

There must have been something in her gaze to pacify his worry, because he turned to the door and knocked four times. "Mama, it's me. Mal."

Mal took a shuddering breath in, like it was hard to breathe, and a pained expression crossed his face that was  _different_  somehow to regret and grief. Inara had only seen that sort of expression once before, on Shepherd Book, when River's cutting words about suffocating in space had terrified him beyond his faith's reach. She had seen Mal soldier on through grief and regret in the past, so the idea of something else bothering him made her mood an even more sombre reflection of his.

Mal raised his hand to knock again, but then there was a small tinkle, like a small hand bell, and Inara understood - this was the code. For some reason, his Mama was restricted to her room, and the four knocks and the hand bell were all the privacy she had, and Inara's heart leapt in her chest, not with love but sympathy. She couldn't  _imagine_  being kept like that, herded into the same four walls, without the freedom of the world, without the freedom of the Black.

Inara hung back a pace as Mal pushed through into the room, but followed him, taking the door and shutting it quietly behind them.

For a moment, Inara didn't know where to look. She supposed if one  _was_  to be trapped in one room, this might have been the room for it to happen best. It was  _gorgeous,_  pale and old embroidery hanging up on every wall, beautiful gazy fabric draped up to the ceiling, and in the middle of it all, a wide, white four poster bed.

And in the middle of that, a woman.

Inara flung her hands around her throat to avoid the gasp that wanted to come out, because Mal had said his mother was a Companion, and that was making streaks of sense across her racing mind. Mal would have been exposed to all kinds of confusing imagery about Companions growing up, and all the increasing rituals and tests for Companions of advancing age who had born children... He wouldn't have had a moment in his childhood free of the Alliance  _meddling_. And then there would be the inevitable hatred, because being a Companion would have stolen some of his mother away from him, but  _love_ , because Mal loved Nana and his Mama, it was so plain to see, otherwise he wouldn't be so cut up about being here, so stoic on talking about them. She remembered in shame their many happy conversations over dinner, and none of them had ever  _asked_  Mal about his family. True, Mal hadn't volunteered the information either, but there had been plenty of openings and they just hadn't  _asked_.

Of course, of  _course_ , having a line of Companions in the family, some of the training would have filtered down automatically. Martha and Mal's Mama wouldn't have been able to  _help_ it. Mal didn't have full Companion training, of course, but he knew enough to steer conversation in certain ways, push people in other directions. It would have stung him to  _use_  that training, but Inara knew he had, and knew now he would have  _hated_  himself for it. 

And his Mama's  _face_ , oh, oh. Inara's brain was only focussing on figuring Mal out because she didn't want to think about the implications of the sight in front of her. She forced herself to focus.

Mal's mother looked like him and Martha both, in the strong cheekbones, the distinctive jaw line, the way they held their heads. His Mama was sat in the bed, coverlet over her knees, dressed in a white silk nightgown that would probably buy the ranch itself over again, and her hands were flat on a panel which shifted underneath her long, wrinkled fingers. Inara had seen them before - it was a Braille tablet. Mal's Mama was blind, and her face was covered in thick red  _welts_ , deep scars that looked like her face had been fairly sliced  _open_.

"Mal, who've you brought to see me?"

Mal's mama turned in Inara's direction directly, and Mal moved over to stand next to his mother. He took one of his mother's hands and gestured at Inara with his head to move closer. She did.

"Mama, this is Inara Serra. Compan-" Mal started the introduction, but Inara swiftly moved to the other side of the bed and interrupted him.

"Former Companion," Inara said, her voice strong even though her heart wavered a little. She could feel the confusion blistering across Mal's face, but she couldn't make herself look at him - she kept her gaze on Mal's mother's face instead. "I've been working as a teacher in a Companion house on a border planet for the last few months."

" _Laoshi_ ," Mal's mama murmured, almost reverently. "An honourable profession. I expect that turned less heads then when I announced to the council and my mother that I was leaving to run a ranch." She chuckled, and Inara found herself smiling at the gentle sound, and amused too, because the scandal would have been something to see - she could picture it now, Martha Lassek's Companion child, striding across the floor and telling the council she was going to do a job with  _physical labour_. Inara wished she was there to see that. "Your accent... House Madrassa?"

Inara nodded, and then blushed a little. "Yes."

"I was there too, once upon a time, before my Mal came along." Mal's mother smiled then, wide and fond, and Inara realized then that oh, she must have been  _beautiful_  before the scarring, so that must be why Mal didn't want Inara to mention the scars. It must be a sore subject. "But excuse my abysmal manners. I don't get many visitors. You must call me Alyssa."

"Then you must call me Inara."

Alyssa smiled. "Mal, pet. Why don't you run along and let me get acquainted with Sister Serra. Although I do feel I almost know her already from your myriad text sprawls on the subject."

"Mama!" Mal blurted, appalled, and this time Inara could bear to lift his face. He was blushing dully, but there was challenge in his expression, challenge that made Inara tense her own jaw at him. She wasn't going to back down, but he wasn't going to not question her  _former Companion_ utterance. "I'm a terrible liar. Inara isn't half as horrible as I made her out to be."

"Away with you," Alyssa said, in a half-teasing tone, and Inara expected Mal to bow out gently, easily, like he did when leaving the engine room, because he  _really_  wanted to stay and gossip with Kaylee all day, but he ducked his head, said quickly "I'll be back later," and fairly hightailed it out of the room.

Inara watched as the door closed.

"Take a seat, sweetheart," Alyssa said, and Inara sank down gracefully into a soft white armchair right next to the bed. "Do not feel bad for me on account of my son. He's not being an ill-mannered child, although I suspect you know him capable of it."

"He has shown... streaks of promise in that direction," Inara allowed, leaning close, like she would with any Companion making idle gossip.

"The subtle understatements... When one gives up Companionship, that's the thing that takes longest to shake." Alyssa smiled again, shaking her head. "My son feels responsible. For my blindness."

"How on  _Earth-that-was_  could Mal be-"

"The terraforming. He thinks because he didn't fight hard enough in the war, that it was his fault that the Alliance terraformed Shadow, made it a Core planet. It was the chemicals that stole my sight, and you know my Mal, I can hear it your voice. He would take the whole world's guilt on his shoulders if he could figure out how."

Inara found herself scowling even though she hated to, hated the inevitable wrinkles from the dour expression. "But that's the most idiotic, ridiculous-" Inara halted the words, because they were coming out too heatedly, too passionate, and this was his  _mother_. She was a thousand times grateful that Alyssa couldn't see her furious blush. 

Alas, it seemed like losing one sense amplified the others, and with Alyssa's Companion training on top... it was a deadly combination. "I knew from the tone in Mal's text sprawls that he was fair gone on you. You can't understand how pleased I am that his feelings aren't quite as unrequited as he feared."

"I- " Inara exhaled roughly. "You and your son are both a menace, I declare it."

Alyssa laughed.

"And... excuse my forwardness... your mobility?"

Alyssa's laugh faded. "A genetic disease. Catches us all eventually. Endwise Syndrome. Otherwise known as-"

"The Sickness." Inara blurted the words out, hot and hard like they deserved to be, because it was the one thing she had  _always_  somehow hated the Alliance for. It was been prevalent in the worlds they Terraformed first, and the Alliance had deliberately withheld medicine for those that couldn't afford the ridiculously expensive medicine, and then some philanthropists had released it into the water supplies, so a lot of people were okay, but the planets that  _didn't_  get it in time, or didn't get enough of it... well, they tended to be Independent-friendly planets.

The Sickness caused the lungs to weaken to a point as such that space flight was impossible. The pressure of taking off would crush the sufferer's lungs, leaving them planet bound, and while all the broadcasts had said the Alliance were sorry, and it was an accident, Inara couldn't help but feel that it was deliberate. That planets full of grounded people were easier to control than those who were free.

And if Mal's mother had the Sickness, and probably Martha too - Inara couldn't recall seeing any sign that anyone on the ranch had been into space for the longest of times - then was it lurking in Mal too? Was that why he had looked so terrified at losing the ability to breathe? Was that why he sometimes made them go the longest way, spinning out in the Black as long as possible, just in case the next time they landed on a planet it could be his last?

"Don't make me completely immobile," Alyssa said, reaching out for Inara's hand. Inara took it automatically. "But I don't like to wander. They think I don't know, you see."

"They think you don't know  _what_?" Inara stared. 

"About the scars," Alyssa said, like she was discussing the weather, but there was a flutter in her shoulders that Inara could empathise with deeply, because Inara had felt that flutter too when saying  _Former Companion_  out loud. Sometimes truths became more  _solid_  when hearing them, rather than just  _knowing_  them. "They think I wouldn't be able to cope if I knew. I enjoyed being beautiful... And now when Mal, when my little boy, comes to see me he can't even  _look_  at me. And when he speaks he's so choked up with the guilt, that I can't breathe with it, and you know what? Maybe  _that's_  the real Sickness."

Inara had spent too long avoiding being irate at a one Reynolds - and too long not speaking her mind as soon as her thoughts formed - and neither of those were a real excuse for what she did next.

Which was yell. At Mal's elderly, room bound, scarred and in pain mother.

"I'm not sure exactly where the idiocy lies in that  _hooey_? But there's  _spades_  full of it. Somewhere. If Mal's grieving over you, then it's because you're acting like you're  _already dead_. If you can't bear his guilt,  _alleviate_  it. Mal risked his life to fight for what he believed in, and maybe he was an idiot for risking his life, but at least he had something he wanted to fight for and he  _fought_  for it. He didn't lie down and  _let_ the Alliance crawl all over him. And the whole  _world_  might call that a loss, but I call that a win." 

Inara yanked her hand away, and stumbled to the door, her hands going to her mouth. She reached for the door, but then Alyssa said, quiet, "Wait."

"I-" Inara tried for words, and had them in her head,  _I'm sorry_ , but her body decided betraying her was the best order of the day, and she didn't blame it at all. It should betray her. She wanted to be strong and confident and herself, and start a new phase of life for herself, and had apparently started it by being mean to someone vulnerable.

It was an  _excellent_  start.

There was a pause, and the sound of Alyssa swallowing, like she was finding it just as hard as Inara to speak. Inara opened her own mouth to try again, but Alyssa said, in a tone that reminded Inara so much of Mal, "Don't be sorry. Don't be sorry for that. You shouldn't."

"Maybe I should a little," Inara said, and then wanted to slap herself, because it was almost _belligerent_. She felt childish, irresponsible, and maybe that was part of what letting part of herself go  _meant_. Reclaiming some of the years she was never allowed to have.

"I'd like to sleep now."

Inara risked a look back, and Alyssa had shifted herself into the position she had been once they'd entered the room; head straight forward, hands sliding over the tablet. She wasn't even bothering to dress it as anything but a lie, and Inara knew she didn't deserve pretence otherwise.

As she shut the door behind herself, she was surprised to find Mal there, leaning against the wall, looking oddly uncertain. For a moment she thought perhaps he had overheard, but he just looked  _defeated_ , like he had the night before. Inara realized he had gone straight to get  _drunk_ last night after seeing her, and that every time must be so hard, and she hated it. 

Mal had spoken of his Mama before. Not much, and only fleetingly. But each time he had been so proud, so  _warm_ , and the truth of his Mama was so far beyond the proud and warmth that Inara could scarcely consolidate that truth with the sad reality. He was proud and warm of what she was, just like he was proud and warm of what Shadow used to be. He was proud of the past, and guilty in what he thought was his part in making the present the way it was, and that had to be too much for one person to carry. 

"I think you left the Blue Sun whiskey under the bed upstairs," Inara said.

He lifted his head, starting a little. "It went  _that_  bad?"

"You have  _no_  idea," Inara said. "I insulted her, I think, which is a rather excellent first impression."

Mal frowned a little, like she supposed any son - even an estranged, guilty one - would do if their mother had been insulted, but there was a seriousness on his face as he stepped a little closer. "You wanted to make a good first impression."

Inara heated immediately, because the bastard didn't even make that a  _question_ , and how dare he have seen through her so well, and- Oh. So even knowing some more of the reason of how Mal was  _who_  he was, it didn't stop that irrational heat curling up from his toes whenever he spoke, and life with him was going to be  _exhausting_. 

Life without him would be empty. It seemed a fair trade.

"It's  _both_  of you," Inara said, shrugging her arms and staring out through the nearest window aimlessly, and because she was hurting, and because she felt guilty, the truth  _kept_  coming out of her, like she couldn't stop it. "Spinning me around. Fogging things up. And I'm so  _used_ to it, and I shouldn't be, that when I stop still-"

"-the world keeps spinning," Mal finished, "even when I'm gone."

She looked at him wordlessly, because that's what she meant, even though she didn't know _what_  it actually meant. Something close to him being crazy, but that crazy was her  _normal_ now, and so  _normality_  felt off-kilter.

"I really could do with a drink," Inara said, unable to hide some of the vulnerability she was feeling creep into her voice, and Mal, unable or unwilling to say anything else, nodded and jerked his head in the direction of his room.

She was just thinking about that whole  _time_  thing, and how maybe there would be enough to apologise to Mal's Mama before the end of the vacation, when the Wave came in.

~~~~

Mal hadn't eavesdropped when Inara spoke to his Mama. Probably due to that languishing guilt and all. But he did eavesdrop when she took the Wave from her girls.

It had been a long time since he had discovered he could hook up the third floor screen to the first floor comms unit without anyone knowing he was overhearing, but the hack he had put in place when he was only eleven still worked. 

It was Kaylee that had come to find them, panting and pink-cheeked and panicked looking, and Inara swept away from Mal without even a backwards glance at just the words "Inara, it's your girls."

Mal had known the idea of Inara on vacation was always going to be a temporary thing, but he had hoped they would have two weeks to try and define Thing, to see if  _Thing_  had a chance of working.

To give Mal time to adjust to the fact that  _Thing_  was love, point in fact. At least on his side. And those two weeks would have been time for him to keep up the pretence, let himself believe that love wasn't one-sided.

He watched the Wave impassively, though he really wanted to get a headstart on the whiskey, to start drowning the whole thing away. The girls were in trouble. One of the Companion Houses had declared the Training House out of ruling, which left the girls basically stranded with no hope of a decent life, no hope of a chance of an honest profession. As much as Mal disliked the Companion way of life, he knew better than he ever did how much better it was than the alternative for some of these guys. How many of them would end up on the edge of nowhere, or in some beat-up brothel like the Heart of Gold but without a strong mistress like Nandi or Petaline.

Mal had seen the life his mother had led before she gave it up to work on the ranch, the parade of men that had all professed to love her, that had just  _used_  her. He had never thought back then how worse it would have been if that was the only work his mother could find, but without a support structure or training to fall back on. The ranch she built with her Companion earnings, and with the Sickness taking her early on, earlier than it had built up in Mal, had his Mama been like these girls, her life would have been a different story.

Inara's words kept repeating in his head.  _Spinning me around. Fogging things up._  He'd used similar words to her in Serenity's belly, and they had been a wrench, and it had felt like he was betraying himself with each word.

And if Inara was feeling that...

This thing, this love, between them... Love should be joyous, or bright, or brilliant, not low, slow torture punctuated by moments of what it  _could_  be. 

Love should be freedom, should be the Black.

Love shouldn't be a prison.

And that would basically be what Mal was asking her to choose between if he told her how he felt without those defensive layers up. He would be asking her to tether herself to him, permanently. Landbound, to a cripple, with a dysfunctional family on a broken planet. 

Inara had said  _Former Companion_ , so she was on the verge of a new life, and Mal couldn't ask her to take all that potential away from her. He couldn't take the sky from her like it had finally, terribly been taken from him.

She needed to help her girls, and her girls would get the best help if Inara was free, nothing to weigh her down. The girls could be her priority.  _Should_  be her priority. The only thing in her mind. With Mal in her life, even barely, he was fogging her up. And her brain should be free and clear to focus on the girls.

They were her life now. Had been her life since she had left  _Serenity_  the first time. Mal's stupid heart should have let her go then, shouldn't have given in to the Operative's trap, should have accepted her decision as final and solid without spinning things up worse.

He hadn't, and now he needed to sever Thing.

For good.

~~~~

Mal waited until Inara had Waved some more of her contacts. He stopped eavesdropping a few of the Waves in - he knew enough. Inara had pulled her hair out from the hairband before the first of them - vacation Inara was already gone - and her Waves were quick and furious. She set up several meetings with the local charter of the Companionship, and with some investors which had been clients, and Mal knew that within the next half hour, Inara would be gone from his house.

And then from his life.

He hurried downstairs after a long pause to compose himself, and slipped in next to Zoe who was peeling potatoes with a large wicked knife that she usually used to slip throats. It made him smile despite the ache in his chest that wasn't entirely due to the Sickness.

River was helping Martha and Belle at the stove. They seemed to be having a handful of a time stopping her from throwing random spices into whatever they were cooking. Jayne, Simon, Kris and Hornsy were playing on Mal's old mah-jong set, with Jayne cheating outrageously, and Kaylee cheering them all on, and if Mal squinted - held up the worn potato peeler Zoe silently handed him - he could imagine the place without Simon, Kaylee and River and, for a prison, it didn't seem so bad.

Zoe edged a look at him, then at the peeler, and the arc he moved it, and she sighed.

"Even the wise must end," Zoe said, not looking at him, flicking another potato peel into the bucket. Mal's chest tightened and this time it definitely wasn't the Sickness. It had been a codephrase in the trenches of Serenity Valley. If two of their platoon had been near death, and they had treatment for one, if one had Endwise, the other was the one they saved.

"Nana," Mal said, grinding her name out. He flickered a look over at the stove. "She's more meddlesome than the Alliance." A paranoid thought struck him, pushing his thoughts from the track they were still hurtling round and around on. "You're staying for you, though, right? Not me. 'cause I'm kicking you out if you're staying for me."

"I'm staying for the baby," Zoe said, keeping her voice low. "I'll probably not stay after the baby's big enough for space. Serenity's half mine by now, sir."

Mal rolled his eyes, and the lie was pleasant between them, because it was apparent to Mal now how this  _was_  home now. There was serenity enough on a ranch to maybe quell some of their darker night terrors, and Mal couldn't believe since  _landing_  on Shadow that he'd ever thought of going anywhere without Zoe.

It wasn't the burning, passionate love he felt for Inara, but Zoe was right: 

It was still love, of a sorts, and it was going to be enough. It made him strong enough to do what he had to do for Inara, for her girls.

And Wash was right too: love meant never having to say sorry. But it didn't mean never doing things worth feeling sorry about.

Which Mal thought as soon as Inara appeared in the doorway, decked in Companion gear, thanking his Nana profusely for the loan. 

Inara grabbed Kaylee in a brief goodbye hug, and then came straight for Mal, purpose in her graceful walk, and Mal tilted his head at her, trying to look as cool as he could. His Nana would know he was faking, she always did, but he was relying on Inara being so frazzled she would miss it.

"Mal," Inara said, sounding so  _urgent_ , "the girls are in trouble. I have to go. I don't know how long it's going to take."

Mal nodded. "We're moving on after two weeks," he said, curtly. He was aware of the kitchen going quieter, and he knew then there wasn't a soul in the kitchen that liked the idea, not including himself. "Fresh report came in for Simon and River. We can't stay this close to the Core."

"Wave me when you know where I can rendezvous," Inara started, and Mal shook his head.

"No."

"Cap'n?" Kaylee said, interrupting. He shot her a look, a painful look he would make amends for later, and Kaylee withered on her seat. Simon grabbed hold of her arm protectively, and Hornsy, newly dedicated to her, made to rise from his seat, but Jayne - practical as ever - put out a hand to make sure the old man stayed put.

"You've got your new life with your girls. I can't keep doing this. Last time I risked my whole crew coming back for you, Inara, even though I dog gone  _knew_  it was a trap, and I can't do that. Zoe's pregnant, Kaylee's heading in that direction in the near future and we all know it, and I won't put them in danger's way. Or the Alliance's." Mal squared his shoulders and folded his arms, and looked down at her coolly.

He nearly broke looking at her. Hurt she couldn't hide flashed across her whole face, and then, piece by piece, the relaxed, free,  _vacation_  Inara melted away. Mal felt regret, sharp and tangy; Simon's red-face in the background did nothing to soften it, although it was a memory he carefully archived away in his mind for later, something to make this day seem less terrible in memory.

"Mal, I'll be back before-"

Mal was already shaking his head. Inara stared at him, her face a little lax, and Mal was going to regret this lost vacation forever. The promise of Inara snuggling up to him, the premise of them together, the incident outside... But that was all it could be. A cherished memory. Something not to say sorry about. But nothing to base a future on. The kitchen may seemed kind at the time, but this planet was a prison trussed up like a fancy present.

"You may be. But we won't be here."

Inara looked at him wordlessly, which Mal knew meant it had worked. Inara was only wordless when completely surprised. 

"Best make your goodbyes," he grunted, and stalked out of the door, because that was his limit on self-sacrifice for a lifetime.

She would have to pass him to leave. It was masochistic on Mal's part, but he wanted one last glimpse of her stalking off, angry and bitter, to cement the fact that this was the best route for them both to go. To keep in his head when he inevitably had the sense memory of her moving against him, or her lips dragging against his, her breath in his mouth, her arms against his skin.

Inara took longer than he expected, but she emerged with just the expression he remembered on the day they dropped her off at the Training House. Just the right amount of dignity and carriage for her to pretend she wasn't feeling a thing.

She must have called for a transport to come, because Nana had leant her the transmitter which would guide the taxi service to the right place, and it was flashing in her right hand. Inara moved forwards, and turned, placing the transmitter on the nearest fence post before walking right up to Mal.

He blinked at her, feeling unsure and fragile again. "Um," he said, eloquently, because he had been hard enough, it had taken enough out of him, and he couldn't be nasty on top. Except perhaps that was him giving too much away, because she just looked sad and unhappy for a moment instead of insulting him.

She looked away, out into Shadow's glittering distances, and fiddled with her sleeves, and then she looked back at him and held out her hand. "Thank you for the... vacation. It was..." Inara swallowed. "Illuminating."

Mal kicked at the dirt, squinting at nothing. "Thanks for-" he started, and coloured. "You know."

"I do." Inara flashed him a smile with too many teeth, which was about the furthest away to happiness a smile could be. "I- just-"

There was a glint in the distance - the taxi was on its way - and Inara's wide smile fell. She pushed forward, right into his personal space, and put one hand on the back of his neck. "Let me pretend," she said, roughly into his ear, "let me pretend, for one more minute, that I'm still on vacation. With you."

It was the  _with you_  that did him in, or maybe it was her hand touching his skin, or maybe, as always, it was her, just  _her_. He couldn't help himself.

She was his undoing. She always had been.

He let out a sound he wasn't even aware he could even make and pulled her to him, claiming her mouth with his own hungrily, his hands winding around her waist, and she didn't hold back either - he gasped and she took advantage, licking into his mouth with an almost desperation. Mal kept his hands as rock steady as he could, knowing if he let her too close it would be too close to a repeat of their first kiss, but he was helpless to do anything but kiss her back. 

The transmitter in Inara's hand pulsed and they shocked apart. Inara's eyes weren't dry as she stepped back and away.

Mal swallowed, and stepped backwards too. The more distance, the better.

The easier it was to pretend it wasn't happening.

The last time they'd said goodbye, it had been with a raucous argument, insults flying back and forth, and Mal had sulked in the cockpit, thinking of a thousand different ways he should have said goodbye.

He couldn't manage a single one.

Inara could. As the taxi transport pulled up, she looked at him sadly, lifted her head and said, "Goodbye, Mal."

There really wasn't anything Mal could even think after that. Not if he wanted to keep his mask intact.

The taxi pulled away, and he turned his back on it, and walked back into his prison.

~~~~

"What the  _hell_  just happened in here?"

A month or so ago, when they stood on the brink of hell, Mal had asked more of his crew than he had ever even asked his platoon in Serenity Valley, and they had given it. He had made his speech about aiming to misbehave, and it had been Jayne that voiced the words of agreement.

The crew knew if  _Jayne_  was agreeing to do something brave and selfless, then they were going to fall right behind him.

It worked in a similar way with other people.

Like, if Kaylee got pissed off, then it was  _really_ something to get pissed off about, and she was pissed off now. She rose up from the table, the spokesperson of the simmering anger in the room.

"Ain't you tired of pushing people away?" Kaylee demanded, stepping away from the others, glaring at Mal with fire in her eyes.

"Rule of conflict. Sometimes you've gotta know when walking away is gonna save your life, save the lives of those in your platoon," Mal returned.

"This isn't the gorramed war, Mal!" Kaylee blurted, and Jayne hissed, because Inara had been the last one to say something like that, and Kaylee had chosen her words deliberately. Sweet Kaylee had chosen words  _deliberately_  to hurt, which meant she really was angry, which meant this was a huge deal.

Of course it was. It was  _Inara_.

More than that, it was the  _future_. His crew just didn't know that yet.

The words made him want to argue, but he had hurt them enough. And maybe the truth was going to hurt them more, but that couldn't be helped.

"I had to do it," Mal said, tiredly.

"You were  _supposed_  to be telling her how you felt," Zoe said, hand on her gun, but that was probably just habit.

Probably.

"Not kick her away," she added. Kaylee shifted on her feet, looking between Mal and Zoe uncertainly.

Mal sighed, and unfortunately that came out with an audible wheeze which made Nana go " _Oh_ ," in this heartbreaking way, and Mal shook his head at her briefly as he sank down into the nearest chair, almost flailing for it and  _hating_  his lack of control.

"It's a good life here," Mal said, almost unevenly. "But it ain't a life to be tied to. It's a life to choose. And I'm tied to it, more than should be, and my choices aside, this is it." He flickered a look at River, who smiled softly, warmly, regretfully - like a little girl seeing her papa was human for the first time. "This is the place I fall."

"Cap'n-" Kaylee stood up from her seat, eyes wide and wondering, concern not hidden. She never could hide her emotions. Mal was glad, so glad, she would never have to. "What is going _on_ here? 'cause I'm spinning, and I'm lost." Simon reached up and squeezed her hand, tight, and Mal let himself have a moment. A moment to try and breathe. A moment to try and scoop some of the salt out of the wound.

"Somethin' we should have talked about before." Mal looked around at them all evenly. "Somethin' we never have. Biggest elephant in the room and none of us even saw it, 'cause I didn't want you to."

"What have we never talked about?" Kaylee asked, again talking for  _all_ of them. Nana gave him a wavering, strong smile. 

Mal looked around at them, at his  _family_ , not just his blood relatives. Only Nana really fit that any more, her and Mama. But his Mama, growing up, was never the only family he had. Mal had been raised by over forty different hands on the ranch, and each of them had a hand in shaping him, and Mal, in turn, had grown to be able to  _make_  family, wherever he could find it. Even in a group as disparate as his crew.

They were all looking at him now, curious and open, not a single one of them judging. And maybe he would never sail with them again, but they were there, and yet again, it was love. Of a sort. 

Of the kind that gave him strength to lift his head, and admit the truth.

"We've never talked about me." He straightened, and leaned forwards, hands clasped on his knees. "I made sure we never did, and that wasn't fair. So now I'm going to tell you a story, and you're going to understand that at the end of it, there's a choice needing to be made. And you-" Mal looked up at Zoe, who wasn't smiling, but there was strength in her ever-present resilience, and he drew that strength now, feeding on it, growing from it. "And you need to know all the facts before you make that choice."

He looked at them all, swallowed, and started to speak.

~~~~

He told them about growing up on Shadow, with his Mama as a Companion until he was seven, and then moving out to make the ranch when his daddy proposed.

He told them about the old client of his mother's who hired some flunkies to beat his dad to death, because she gave up being a Companion to be with a common guy from Verbena.

He told them about growing up with forty hands as family, and how he was the most loved kid on the  _planet_. Except the Alliance kept moving in on the ranch, demanding more and more tax, making the people Mal loved work more and more hours while people near the Capital City grew richer and lazier.

He told them about the way the hands taught him, how Hornsy taught him to swim, and Dorf taught him how to recognise cattle. How his Mama had a whole wealth of knowledge about animals and buyers and the way the world worked. How Belle taught him to make noise when he fell over. How that had made him want to teach other people.

He told them of the day the Terraforming happened, how he couldn't fight the Alliance soldiers keeping him and Nana and the hands inside, how he'd punched and kicked and done his  _best_ , how he'd told them a thousand, million times about his Mama, trapped outside.

He told them of the grief, the regret, the  _anger_ , when his Mama was found in a heap outside a hut, crying in pain and her beauty stripped away from her. The grief and anger led to him signing up with the Independents, and as the war continued, as he saw more and more how the Alliance messed and meddled and interfered with folk, as he saw the Alliance telling folk  _what to do_  and  _who to be_ , the war became a righteous cause and he its most fervent follower.

He told them how the grief of what he had not stopped from happening at home made him careless, take risks, until the first time he had a platoon under his control. Then the crazy subsided and he knew he had to put himself aside to ensure his unit got home safely.

He didn't tell them of the blankness after Serenity Valley, the darkness he would always carry with him, because they already knew that part.

He let Zoe tell them about Endwise Syndrome, because she lost her whole family to it on her home planet Beylix - she herself was free due to a friend taking her on vacation for a random week to Liann Jiunn, where there was enough medication in the water. Simon provided more information about it, and the propaganda they were given about it in the Core. 

He spoke until his throat was hoarse, then kept going until it was all out. And then he laid down in clean, uncomfortable language about not being able to survive too many pressure changes, and how it was best for him to stay here on Shadow, just in case he needed to fly in an emergency, and how Zoe was staying temporarily and for the rest, it was up to them, but Serenity was theirs on loan until Zoe was confident enough to take the helm.

And at the end of it, Kaylee just crossed the room and threw her arms around him, and he let her, he just  _let_  her, and she said "Thank you" in this awed, small voice, like he'd given her something really special, even though it was just words.

Then she straightened, and looking older, wiser, more mature than her years, she said, "Cloud cover means we're safe for a couple of weeks. We'll all let you know then what's gonna happen."

Mal nodded, and nodded, and looked up to try and get out how thankful and  _messed up_  he still was, and he couldn't speak any more.

But not because his voice had given out.

But because of who was standing at the door.

In a crappy, Cortex trashy romance fiction, it would be Inara. Hair tangled, cheeks glowing, full of  _I don't care what you said_  and  _I love you_ , but if it had been Inara, Mal would have kicked her right back out of the door. Because that would have been an Inara who had given up her girls for some stupid dream, and that wasn't the Inara he wanted.

He wanted an Inara who would stand up for what she believed in, fight until the end, and never surrender. More than that, he wanted a  _world_  in which Inara could do it. He couldn't win the war to ensure all folk had the same opportunity, but Inara... he had helped her out of the spin and confusion to a place where  _she_  had that opportunity. It wasn't perfect, but again, it was _enough_.

It wasn't Inara.

It was his mother.

Guilt choked him, and he couldn't breathe, and this time it was the Sickness - Simon leapt out of his chair and started checking his pulse, and sent Kaylee for the medkit, and Nana tossed Simon a needle with the Albuterol that would assuage the attack - and it worked quick enough. Mal hated,  _hated_  feeling this vulnerable in front of everyone, and his natural instinct was to either fight everyone in the room, or run away again, but he couldn't even though he wanted to. His legs were jelly and he wasn't a thousand per cent sure he wasn't dreaming.

He couldn't move, and that meant he couldn't stop them. Couldn't stop Jayne in time from being a total  _ass._

"Alyssa-" Nana breathed quickly, her hand going to the wall, concern and shock washing over her face. "If you had rung we would have brought you something."

"No, I'm here to spend time with my son and his family." Alyssa smiled. "Someone best start to introducing them. And maybe find me a chair."

"She's your  _Mama_? I knew you said her face got tore up, but seriously-" Jayne said, and Kris bundled an arm around Jayne's face, but it wasn't quick enough, and Mal and Belle and Nana and Hornsy all just  _froze_  in complete horror.

"Yeah, and from the tone of your voice you sound  _real_  pretty," Alyssa said, in a heavily sarcastic tone that sounded so like Mal that Kaylee giggled and fairly flew across the room to grab her by the arm.

"Hi, I'm Kaylee! I'm Mal's mechanic. I saw you had some Obatech gear in one of your huts? I think I could get them working for you." 

"Those haven't worked in a decade. Sweetheart, you manage that, I am forever in your debt."

Mal stared in amazement, as Kaylee led Alyssa over to the table, as his whole crew started to introduce themselves to her, and he, crap, he really  _was_  crying at this scene, and yeah, that was embarrassing.

"It's the medication," Mal snapped as Nana moved over to him. She pulled up a chair and sat next to him, and put her head on his shoulder, looping her arm into his.

"Sure it is, pickle," she said, and Mal glanced at her. "Medication for me, too."

"Belle's not on any medication, so she's got no excuse," Mal sniffed, each word feeling awkward, like a move in battle he wasn't sure of.

Nana chuckled under her breath, and Mal watched her. Nana had been his lifeline in the months after his mother's injury, and he'd just left her, run as fast as he could, with the cause of the war clamouring over and over the guilt, and his stomach twinged and he gripped her old hand in his.

"I'm sorry it took me so long to come, Nana."

Nana smiled, wide and fond. "At least you're home now, honey."

"Yeah," Mal said, and closed his eyes, letting the sound of it wash over him. "I'm home."

~~~~

 **Two Weeks Later**

They sent Mal out on a meaningless milk run, because otherwise he would have been fretting under their feet the whole time. They all told him, made  _sure_  to tell him, one at a time. Simon even went so far as to tell him he was more irritating than all the expectant fathers he'd suffered underfoot during his medical training  _combined_.

Today was the day his crew told them whether they were leaving or not, and Mal felt queasy with it. It was like when he was eighteen, and waiting to hear if he had passed his teaching qualification or not. The result felt like it meant  _everything_.

The only difference was,  _this_  was everything. And apparently Mal was being more than a mite irritating about it.

He couldn't help it. It was an itch. He had no choice over his decision, but he regretted it every day like it was a real choice. He might have sort have done to his best to sway some certain decisions. Like, introducing Jayne to the Coppertop Ranch, where Mei-Lin (married, Mal's brain sighed mournfully) had a bunch of unmarried cousins still living with her. And finding proof on the Cortex that Simon and River's bounty was down to a measly hundred credits, meaning he could pay off any bounty hunters that came looking for them in relative ease. And showing Kaylee the hidden warehouse near Serenity that had a whole  _bunch_  of scrap (he justified that by telling her a lot that she could take whatever she needed for the ship with her. Perhaps he told her that too many times.)

Eventually Nana got irritated and threw him out of the house with a pull-along cart and a handful of credits to go buy  _actual milk_  from Folley Ranch. It was a good three hour walk, and the sun was its usual high self, thanks to meddlesome Alliance fidgeting which meant Kaylee fixing the water hoses was going to be an incredible boon to the ranch, because Core planets demanded near perpetual sunny days.

Mal trundled back with the milk, dragging his heels, because he fully expected to get back to the house and have Nana, Belle, Kris, Hornsy, Mama and Zoe mooching around the table, depressed.

The reality was a little bit different.

If by a little bit you meant  _aliens_  had come down and taken over.

Because he came back to nothing but pure  _chaos_.

The house wasn't as empty as he was expecting when he pulled up to the front foor, four large metal containers of milk clanking together.

It was the opposite.

There were girls.

 _Everywhere_.

Mal pushed open the door to find  _twelve_ of them sat on the floor, mouths open as Hornsy was apparently telling them tales of the war. There were a good ten of them shifting boxes around, and a ton of boxes still lined up against the wall, and Zoe was directing them with almost brutal army efficiency.

Nana was at the stove, chatting with Belle and Mama while River cooked. River had decided to become a chef over the last couple of weeks. Mal remembered wanting a cook when flying out with Serenity the first time. River was excellent, as she was at  _everything_  she tried, unless she got distracted and burned the whole lot. Hence the supervision.

But the girls. Mal didn't have a clue what was going on. 

Not until two of them skipped over to take the milk from him, and he saw someone leaning in the doorway, shaking her head at him.

" _Inara_? What the-"

"You're an idiot. An absolute pig idiot." Inara stepped forward into the room, apparently not caring there was nearly thirty people in the room staring now in open interest, and hell,  _more_  of them. One of the girls had apparently run off to drag Simon and Jayne into the hoo-hah too. "You really thought it was a noble, heroic thing to throw me away to  _choose for myself._ Honestly, Mal."

Mal frowned, because being insulted tended to do one of two things - pull a number of answering sentiments out of his brain and into the air, or make him stop and stare like, well, an absolute pig idiot.

"What-"

"My girls need work, training. You have a practically empty ranch. You're a trained teacher. I don't see why this maths didn't occur to you before-"

"I'm an  _English_  teacher," Mal said, and then flushed. "Um," he tagged on, because that was part of the story he hadn't told anyone and Kaylee was already giggling at the slip, because she'd been trying to figure out his teaching subject for the whole last fortnight.

"C'mon." Inara tapped the side of his face twice, in a friendly  _chop-chop_  manner. "I've got 30 girls to move in, and a training area to sort out, and a schedule to come up with so we can make the best out of the ranch. Your Mama's already working that one out; she's amazing. We've been texting each other."

"You've been-" Mal stared, and blinked some more, because it seemed like the thing to do.

"Of course I have," Inara said. "I insulted her. It was terrible manners. I had to apologise."

"She's a terrific conversationalist," his Mama butted in, holding up her shifting Braille tablet. Come to think of it, his Mama had carted the thing with her everywhere since venturing out of her room.

"But-" Mal worked his mouth soundlessly for a moment. He was aching from trawling in the sand, and wondering if perhaps he'd died out in the heat and no one was kind enough to tell him. "This is  _my house_ ," he finished, on a vaguely whiny note.

"Yeah," Simon said, brushing past him and patting his shoulder solemnly, "our dad used to suffer under that illusion too."

River giggled as the two siblings exchanged a glance, sharing some secret memory between them.

"Give it up, cap'n. You're not going to win this. There's too many girls in this house," Zoe said.

"I'd listen to her," Kaylee chimed in. "Simon did a scan, and there's another girl on the way. Baby Washburne's a girl."

Mal looked around wordlessly, at all the smiling faces, and his Mama up and about, already fussing around the girls, and this wasn't anything he had pictured, anything he had planned-

But it was something he  _wanted_. Something he wanted without knowing he even damn near wanted it.

He looked at Inara, who was looking at him with the same daft, fond expression he knew he used on her, and he sagged, spreading his arms. "I've never surrendered before," Mal said. "Run when I should have fought. Fought when I should have run. But I've never surrendered."

"You're going to have to." Inara stepped in close, wrapped one of his hands within hers, and damn it, he  _had_  given away too much in that last kiss. "You said it yourself.  _This is where I fall_."

He'd never actually said that to her, so one of the others had to have relayed his whole conversation to her. Kaylee went a little pink, but Mal suspected his Nana might have been meddling almost as much as the Alliance could. He'd have words with her. One day. When he _could_. When it didn't feel like his head was going to split in two.

"And when you fall," his Mama said, her voice clear and strident, and Mal closed his eyes, and it was like he was young again, and he was okay, and life was stretching ahead, full and free of the Alliance, "well, you've got people around to catch you. So you're gonna be okay."

Mal opened his eyes. Inara was looking up at him, head cocked to one side. She was still clad in her Companion finery, but she'd pulled her hair up again, and she looked like she was half from that world, half from his, and maybe he should stop thinking like that. Putting divides in. The world was crazy enough without adding extra boxes and trying to make things fit.

"And us," Mal said, keeping his voice low as possible even though some of the girls squealed in excitement, and huh, perhaps Kaylee wasn't kidding that some of Inara's girls had been writing trashy fiction about them. He looked at Inara and pretended it was only them in the room. "Are we gonna be okay?"

"If you promise to wash..." Inara said, after a moment of pretending to consider it, and Mal couldn't help himself - he laughed. And laughed. And sank down onto a chair and laughed some more.

Until some of the girls spilled the milk he brought in, then he stopped laughing and declared he was going to fire them all in the morning. But Kaylee, damn her, pointed out he would say that a lot and it didn't mean a  _thing_. It was an uncomfortably true observation.

And that's how things were. 

Mal didn't take up teaching the girls for a while, but after a few weeks he found some of his books pulled from the shelves, books he hadn't seen for  _decades_. Another morning, he found one of the girls wanting to know what he was so absorbed in. It hadn't felt odd to read it to her. Then it felt quite natural to read to  _all_ of them, at night, after dinner, when they were all pleasant and sleepy. After that it felt churlish to say he wasn't ready to teach. They worked the ranch in the morning, and Inara and Mal taught the girls in the afternoon and evening.

Simon and River took to jaunting away in Serenity when fresh releases came over the cortex and coming back after a short spell, until the Alliance didn't care anymore and River started to teach dance to the girls, and science, and cooking. Simon doctored to the girls, and married Kaylee in the Spring. 

Jayne, to all their surprise, stayed on Shadow but just moved one ranch over - he married Mei-Lin after she divorced her husband for him, and Mal couldn't find it in him to care. Zoe had her girl and was so happy Mal had to keep pinching himself that she hadn't  _exploded_  with it all. 

Inara didn't share his bed again, not for the longest time, and when she did, she came to stay. No vacation this time. Even getting together was nothing like he ever pictured it, and perhaps that was the problem. The romance and the drama of their fighting was thrilling, engaging, fantastical, but to build on something you needed calm and quiet and being at the same rhythm as your partner, and not a syncopated beat out.

Mal found that out a day a month or so into the new way of life, when they were packing up the few clothes that wouldn't fit anyone, and everyone was in the old wardrobe cleaning the racks and making the space become what it used to be used for. Each day the ranch took a step not towards the past, what it used to be, but to something else - something  _better._

It happened suddenly, quietly, without fanfare and without thought, which was probably another contender in their conflicted relationship before. It took time, time for them to realize even though they  _knew_  each other now, and neither one of them was a mystery to the other, they could still  _surprise_  each other, and  _surprise_  was how it happened. Even though there were others around, without thinking and without entirely meaning to, Mal leant forwards and pressed his mouth to hers, a quick gesture with no possessive undertones, just a fleeting kiss to show her how much her company meant to him. When he pulled back, he knew he was blushing but he manfully just smiled at her.

Inara looked at him quizzically for a second, until a smile warmed her face and she turned back to her task -  _later_ , his gaze said, and she nodded and couldn't hide her smile. They probably would have gotten away with the nonchalant act, except for Kaylee's subtle perceptive observation of the interaction.

Well, Mal labelled it subtle, but there wasn't anything subtle about the coughing emanating from Kaylee's small lungs.

Still, that moment became them. Not roaring trumpets, or a passionate fire, but a slow burn, culminating in happiness and a slow mutual regard. Something quiet and impulsive, warm and gentle, right and unhurried in a way that romantic stories never were but good romances always  _should_  be. It was love of all sorts in the end. And it was always, always,  _always_  enough.

~~~~

 _Home is where your history begins. Home is where they catch you when you fall._  
 _ **Where the Heart Is**_ _ **-**_   _ **Billie Letts**_


End file.
